Bring Back Our Girls

Spring, 2014 millions of Twitter users unwittingly helped turn a group of 276 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, a little-known Islamist sect, into a central prize in the global War on Terror by retweeting a call for their release: #BringBackOurGirls. Soldiers, spies, and glory hunters descended in a remote part of Nigeria that had barely begun to use the internet. Hostage talks and military intervention failed; the schoolgirls were forced to take survival into their own hands. As their days in captivity dragged into years, the young women learned to withstand hunger, disease, and torment, and became witnesses and victims of unspeakable brutality. Many of the girls were Christians who refused to convert to their captors' fundamentalist creed. Parkinson and Hinshaw reveal how a few days of online activism can bring years of offline consequences for people continents away. — adapted from jacket