Not Without My Daughter

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. First Edition [stated], Second Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. [10], 420, [2] pages. Glossary. Inscribed by Betty Mahmoody on the half title. Some page discoloration. DJ has some wear and soiling. Slightly cocked. Betty Mahmoody (born June 9, 1945, in Alma, Michigan) is an American author and public speaker best known for her book, Not Without My Daughter, which was also made into a film. She is the President and co-founder of One World: For Children, an organization that promotes understanding between cultures and strives to offer security and protection to children of bi-cultural marriages. Not Without My Daughter is an account of her experiences in 1984-1986, when she left Michigan, to go to Iran with her husband and daughter for what she was promised would be a short visit. Once there, she and her daughter were held against their will. The book was made into a 1991 film starring Sally Field as Betty. The book details her 500 mi (800 km) escape to Turkey through the snowy Iranian mountains, and the help she received from many Iranians. Derived from a Kirkus review: Mahmoody delivers a riveting account of her now-famous ordeal in Iran, where she and her young daughter were held hostage for a year and a half by her Shiite Muslim husband. In 1986, American Betty Mahmoody agreed to travel to Iran with her Iranian-born husband, Moody, and their four-year, old daughter. The trip was to last two weeks, during which time they would visit Moody's Islamic fundamentalist family, whom Moody had seen infrequently over the years. Upon arrival, Betty found conditions and customs that she was unprepared for. When the two weeks of the visit were up, Moody informed her that she and Mahtob would be staying in Iran with him. Bound in his sister's dismal fortress home, eating unsanitary meals in squalid conditions, and subjected to an increasingly depressed Moody, Betty tried frantically to escape. When Betty found a way out, it involved stealing across the Turkish border with smugglers, by horse. A hair-raising escape brought her and Mahtob back to the US, where they now live under assumed names, fearful of Moody. This gripping tale--which offers a frightening glimpse at life in Khomeini's Iran.