The Miss Stone Affair: America's First Modern Hostage Crisis

I was given the book as a gift with no knowledge about the incident involving Ellen Stone. With my limited knowledge of the political events of this part of the world during this time, I set about reading it as a novel...reminding myself often that this was non-fiction. Teresa Carpenter has done an excellent job in her research and her detail. She has presented this factual event with all the added information and quotations that make it read as a great "story". Thanks to this book, I feel I truly know this strong and determined woman. Since finishing The Miss Stone Affair, I have begun to wonder how many other "stories" are out there waiting to be told about incidents that are only single sentences in history books. I hope Ms. Carpenter continues with another book about another little known adventurer.

I have long admired Teresa Carpenter's writing -- mainly her ability to train her lens on a relatively narrow topic and, in the process, keep us riveted as she recreates entire worlds. In "The Miss Stone Affair," a New York Times Notable Book, Carpenter's main subject is Ellen Stone, a Protestant missionary who in 1901 was kidnapped by a band of revolutionaries seeking to overthrow Turkish rule. Miss Stone was seized along with a pregnant Albanian woman named Katerina Tsilka. What I love most about Carpenter's writing is how straightforward, even understated her prose is, as she expertly spins an engrossing tale. She did this with the trio of articles for the Village Voice that won her the Pulitzer Prize; she did it with her book "Missing Beauty," about the murder of a Tufts University professor; and she has done it here with the story of MIss Stone, whose unlikely adventure Carpenter tells with her inimitable grace.

As a student of the life of the US Minister to Turkey at the time of this kidnapping, I was thrilled when Ms Carpenter's book appeared. She has fleshed out some of the stories that I had read, in such a way that the entire event comes alive, vividly. She must have had a good time researching this book, because it is filled with the kind of people you expect to find in a good historical novel--from the fearless spinster missionary to the motley cast of her would be rescuers. We end up feeling that all of them had more than one motive for their involvement, but Miss Stone makes it back home again, and so we feel, at the end, as happy as if we had read a good who-done-it. Ms Carpenter is to be commended--it is an incident from history that can shed light on our own time, in which those who are keen on spreading terror and anarchy are not all that different from what happened a century ago.... Some day, I hope Ms Carpenter will tackle a full length book about John G A Leishman, the US Minister and his extended family. It extends from a rags-to-riches childhood in Pittsburgh, through the saving of H C Frick's life, to the presidency of Carnegie Steel, to seeing his daughters make marital matches in the European nobility, and having sons-in-law and grandsons who served on both sides of World Wars I and II. Another good yarn that needs to be told! And Ms Carpenter is has the gift of story telling to do it well. See my other reviews on related subjects: "After the Ball," "Meet You in Hell". "The Johnstown Flood", Martha Sanger's book about her ancestor H C Frick, "Mellon" (Canadine) and "Carnegie".

Ah, that great lost age, now faded into ghostly mist - the struggle for national liberation and unification of the Bulgarian people. Thank you for a great book, Teresa Carpenter. :) Miss Stone did have a great many admirers in Bulgaria and had such a positive impact on so many people. She was like a living legend roaming the mountains! The Bulgarian Mother Teresa. Her deep love, humanity and immense understanding of our native region are an inspiration for all of us. Wonderful book! Absolutely first-rate.