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Start giftingSix Years in the Hanoi Hilton
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreIn 1967, US Air Force fighter pilot James Shively was shot down over North Vietnam. After ejecting from his F-105 Thunderchief aircraft, he landed in a rice paddy and was captured by the North Vietnamese Army. For the next six years, Shively endured brutal treatment at the hands of the enemy in Hanoi prison camps. Back home, his beloved girlfriend Nancy eventually moved on and married another man. Bound in iron stocks at the Hanoi Hilton, unable to get home to his loved ones, Shively contemplated suicide. Yet somehow he found hope—and he became determined to help his fellow POWs survive.
In a newspaper interview several years after his release, Shively said, “I had the opportunity to be captured, the opportunity to be interrogated, the opportunity to be tortured and the experience of answering questions under torture. It was an extremely humiliating experience. I felt sorry for myself. But I learned the hard way life isn’t fair. Life is only what you make of it.”
Written by Shively’s stepdaughter Amy Hawk—whose mother Nancy ultimately reunited with and married Shively in a triumphant love story—and based on extensive audio recordings and Shively’s own journals, Six Years at the Hanoi Hilton is a haunting, riveting portrayal of life as an American prisoner of war trapped on the other side of the world.
Amy Shively Hawk is the stepdaughter of James Shively, who married her mother after his release from a Hanoi prison when Amy was five years old. Amy’s background is in journalism, speaking, and advertising/marketing. She has a BA in communication studies from Eastern Washington University, and a minor in broadcast journalism. Amy is married to Steve, has a teenage daughter and son, and lives in Hood River, Oregon.
Traber Burns worked for thirty-five years in regional theater, including the New York, Oregon, and Alabama Shakespeare festivals. He also spent five years in Los Angeles appearing in many television productions and commercials, including Lost, Close to Home, Without a Trace, Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomy, Cold Case, Gilmore Girls, and others.
Caroline Shaffer is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. A former company member at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for nineteen years, she received an MFA from the American Conservatory Theater.
Michael Braun is an actor and voice artist, born and raised in New York City. Since graduating from the Yale School of Drama, he has performed in many productions in New York and across the country, including War Horse on Broadway, and The Winter’s Tale at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His television and film credits include The Good Wife, Nurse Jackie, Law & Order, and Dare. He is a recipient of the Princess Grace Award and the Herschell Williams Prize for Acting.
Reviews
“I have not read any other book on the POW experience that impressed me to the same extent.”
“An outstanding tribute to a remarkable person. The story of Jim Shively truly shows off the best of the human spirit.”
“Not merely a story of war, captivity, and torture. It is the story of a special man, one of the best and brightest of his generation.”
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