Girl on a Plane by Miriam Moss - OPTIONAL

Moss, Miriam  Girl on a Plane, 277 pgs.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.  $17.99  Content: Language: PG-13 (12 swears); Mature Content: PG; Violence: PG-13.  

Anna is a fifteen year old girl who has lived in different places her whole life because her father is in the army.  At the end of the summer in 1970 she is flying from Bahrain to England to go back to boarding school.  The plane she is on is hijacked and taken to Beirut.  As the Pakistani hijackers try to negotiate with the English government, Anna and the other passengers are left on a desert airstrip in the sweltering heat without proper water and food.   

This book is a historical fiction based on the author’s own experiences on the hijacked plane.  I think that the character was likable and even when the story slowed down I was interested in what was going to happen.  The postscript and questions answered by the author are also interesting.  The violence is not graphic or gruesome but one of the soldiers explains how his parents were shot in front of him and one of the leaders continually threatens the passengers.  I wish there would have been more historical information as an author's note.

MS – OPTIONAL.  Reviewer, C. Peterson.