Last night, former Boston Globe Spotlight team member, award-winning reporter and current BU journalism professor Mitchell Zuckoff joined me in studio for the full 8pm hour to discuss his incredible book Lost in Shangri La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II.
On May 13, 1945, twenty-four officers and enlisted men and women stationed on what was then Dutch New Guinea boarded a transport plane named the Gremlin Special for a sightseeing trip over “Shangri-La,” a beautiful and mysterious valley surrounded by steep, jagged mountain peaks deep within the island’s uncharted jungle.
But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miraculously, three passengers survived – WAC Corporal Margaret Hastings, Lieutenant John McCollom, and Sergeant Kenneth Decker.
Emotionally devastated, badly injured, and vulnerable to disease, parasites, and poisonous snakes in the wet jungle climate, the trio was caught between man-eating headhunters and the enemy Japanese. With nothing to sustain them but a handful of candy and their own fortitude, they endured a harrowing trek down the mountainside – straight into a primitive tribe of superstitious natives who had never before seen a white man or woman.
Lost in Shangri-La recounts this incredible true-life adventure for the first time. A riveting work of narrative nonfiction that vividly brings to life an odyssey at times terrifying, enlightening, and comic, Lost in Shangri-La is a thrill ride from beginning to end.
I don’t have time for or interest in novels. What I love are history books that read like novels. This is one of those books. Mitchell brings his reporters chops to the book, traveling around the world to talk to survivors and even the primitive tribesmen (did I mention they are cannibals?) who found them way back in 1945. This is just an incredible piece of storytelling and I hope we did the book justice, because I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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