Running late for work one morning in September 1994, Tom Hargrove, communications director for an international agricultural aid organization in Cali, Colombia, was mildly annoyed when he spotted a roadblock, or reten, manned by soldiers in fatigues. He chafed at the delay, but told himself that guerrillas and kidnappers didn’t operate on a main highway in broad daylight. But Hargrove had been dreadfully mistaken. Despite his assertions that he worked for a non-profit agricultural agency, he was forced at gunpoint into a vehicle and driven into the mountains by communist narco-terrorists who believed he was a valuable hostage. For almost a year, Hargrove was held by the guerillas and moved from one remote location to another. To maintain his grip on sanity, he recorded his daily experiences in makeshift journals: in a checkbook; on children’s notebooks; and on scraps of paper scrounged during his ordeal. Hargrove’s story, originally published in 1995, was the basis for the major motion picture
Proof of Life , starring Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan. Now available again in paperback,
Long March to Freedom
chronicles one man’s spirited determination to hang onto life and faith amid nearly impossible circumstances.