A personal story of survival, hope, and spiritual awakening in the face of unspeakable tragedy.It’s the unfathomable modern legend that has become a testament to the resilience of the human spirit: the 1972 Andes plane crash and the Uruguayan rugby teammates who suffered seventy-two days among the dead and dying. It was a harrowing test of endurance on a snowbound cordillera that ended in a … ended in a miraculous rescue. Now comes the unflinching and emotional true story by one of the men who found his way home.
Four decades after the tragedy, a climber discovered survivor Eduardo Strauch’s wallet near the memorialized crash site and returned it to him. It was a gesture that compelled Strauch to finally “break the silence of the mountains.”
In this revelatory and rewarding memoir, Strauch withholds nothing as he reveals the truth behind the life-changing events that challenged him physically and tested him spiritually, but would never destroy him. In revisiting the horror story we thought we knew, Strauch shares the lessons gleaned from far outside the realm of rational learning: how surviving on the mountain, in the face of its fierce, unforgiving power and desolate beauty, forever altered his perception of love, friendship, death, fear, loss, and hope.
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6/14/21- An interesting tale about an awful plane crash in the Andes. A quick, but detailed read about the difficulties the group of people had to fight through to survive. Things you could never even imagine, and yet they maintained a positive spirit throughout.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this book. But what I have found is love, brotherhood, and a deep embracing of life.
Eduardo Strauch Urioste was a passenger on the infamous plane that crashed in the Andes mountains in 1972. Rescuers couldn’t even locate the plane, much less the survivors. For 72 days, the people who survived the initial crash lived on snow, the few supplies they could salvage from the plane, and cannibalism. Strauch reflects on his time on the mountain and the ways it shaped his life afterward, strengthened his faith, and bonded him to the other passengers in unbreakable ways.
I didn’t know much about this event other than the bare minimum prior to reading this book: a plane crashed in South America in the ’70s; the passengers survived by cannibalism; and the movie Alive, which I haven’t seen, is based on it. So I expected to get more of a straightforward recounting of the facts. What I got was a much more spiritual reflection. Had I known that, I might have rated this a bit higher, but since I expected a survival story and got something more contemplative, I had a hard time settling into the proper frame of mind for enjoying this book for exactly what it was.
Strauch shares his story with the utmost respect and love for his fellow survivors and those who were lost in the crash and in the 72 agonizing days afterward. He honors those whose bodies allowed him and the others to survive. He was wounded pretty badly in the crash so his ability to help with foraging for supplies and setting up shelter was limited. He’s thankful to those who were physically able to do more and who had more knowledge to share. They willingly gave everything they could to the group to ensure as many people survived as possible. His love for them shone from the pages.
The story of the crash and survival was interesting to me. But that all wrapped up rather quickly and the author spent a great deal of time on a sort of spiritual mysticism that grew among the survivors and their families. Mothers knew in their hearts whether their sons were dead or alive. Other inexplicable knowledge and fantastic coincidences that I’ve largely forgotten were detailed. Other readers will enjoy these sorts of contemplations more than I do but this part started to drag a lot for me. I am a person of faith but I consider faith to be a largely personal matter; this very public exploration and explanation started to lose me. I appreciate that a harrowing experience like this would either strengthen your faith or break it and I’m glad that Mr. Strauch became spiritually stronger. I just didn’t personally gain much by reading about it. Others will disagree.
Ultimately, the author seems to have made his peace with the mountain and to be grateful for the ways that it shaped his life afterwards. He revisits the site regularly and feels a kind of peace there that he doesn’t find anywhere else, at that place where he was perhaps closer to God than he ever will be again until his death. The heart and mind that can take such a horrific event and emerge with that sort of serenity is special indeed.
I do recommend this for readers who enjoy reading about spiritual matters more than I do. I’m glad that the author has found such a healthy way to live with the event that forever shaped his life. That sort of reflection isn’t to my personal taste but others will find comfort in it.
I downloaded this for free as part of Amazon’s monthly First Reads program for Prime members (I am NOT an Amazon affiliate).
Years ago, I read Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. Out of the Silence: After the Crash is the retelling of that story from the perspective of decades of hindsight.
The horror experienced by the people involved and the terrible decisions they had to make were chronicled in both accounts, but the thing I found most intriguing in Strauch’s account was the metaphysical aspects of what he went through. Trapped on mountain high in the Andes, knowing that the search for survivors had been abandoned, Strauch was still able to appreciate the cold beauty of his surroundings. His descriptions of feeling at one with nature in the midst of an unfathomable tragedy illustrated what happens when all externals are ripped away and humans are allowed to realize their connection with the universe. It was inspiring.
I watched the movie Alive many years ago when it first came out and was curious to see how the lives of the survivors of such a traumatic event continued. This book was….wow. Just wow. Deeply contemplative and honest, although I wonder how much time and life have changed the author’s perspective. Amazing, though, and I found myself feeling quite peaceful as I read it. Highly recommended.
I enjoy reading stories of survival and this event from years ago captured my attention. Wanting to learn more about what happened in those Andes Mountains back in the ‘70’s, I gave this version a try. It was an incredible tale told by a survivor who had a thirty year perspective of the event which gave it a mature vision. I took a star off because at times, Strauch got a bit heavy on the internal psychological pondering. I was able to skip over some of that to bring me back to the actual story. It was well done and when I finished it I rented the movie “Alive” for visual topper to the events.
Wonderful book and very inspirational
The old story of the Chilean soccer team wrecked in the Andes for 72 days, freshly told, not only how they did it, but how the writer, especially, found inspiration.
I could not put this book down I finished reading it at 2:30am
I wanted to read this book because I remember hearing about a crash in the Andes and I wanted to learn about what happened.
Please read this book and see if you learned as much as I did.
Back in the 1970’s I was mesmerized by reading Alive by Piers Paul Reid; it recounted how a rugby team’s airplane crashed in the Andes Mountains and how , Donner Pass-like , the survivors were forced into cannibalism to survive. That was nonfiction too , but this recent account by a heretofore silent survivor went beyond describing the sheer horror of the pain from the crash itself into a snow-covered mountain, to contemplating whether if he sent thought messages to his family, could they hear? He stressed how exactly the opposite of the lord of the flies-like his group of survivors worked together the entire 72 days they were able to hang on. This book is deeply introspective, written nearly 50 years later. Having read both books, I highly recommend this book whether or not the reader is familiar with the subject,
Deeply moving memoir. I approached this book with trepidation, but found profound shared human experience. We all have a mountain.
An incredibly moving, heart-wrenching story. Highly recommend.
This is a true story of a plane crash that happened in 1972 in the Andes. The terrivle conflicts while trying to survive and the stamina and will of those that fought to live is amazing. Makes you really think about your life and wonder what choices you would make if this awful fate fell to you.
So Sad but uplifting as well. a story that needed telling.