Stories of escape from captivity can be as inspiring as they are harrowing. Here are four true stories of women who maintained their identity and hope for escape in the face of frightening circumstances.

A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett

As young woman, Amanda Lindhout traveled the world in search of adventure. An aspiring photojournalist, she roughed it through Central and South America, Asia and Africa. After a childhood spent in poverty, witnessing abuse, Lindhout thrilled to her newfound freedom and the interesting people and beautiful places she encountered. Her dreams became nightmares though, when she and her travel companion were kidnapped and held for ransom. Lindhout knows her family is poor and cannot afford to save her. For the next three years, the free spirited Lindhout is forced to confront dark realities about humanity and about herself as she suffers at the hands of her captors. As she finds surprising wells of inner strength to draw on throughout her ordeal, her story goes from merely interesting to truly impressive.

The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam

From the age of seven, Somaly Mam was fending for herself in the Cambodian forests. She had been born into a life of extreme poverty, in a minority tribal culture. Her parents had disappeared, her grandmother had died. It wasn’t an easy life, but Mam was surviving, foraging and fishing for herself, and occasionally getting assistance from other villagers. But at age eleven, a man claiming to be her grandfather convinced Mam that he could reunite her with her lost family and took her to the city. Instead, he abused Mam, used her as slave labor, and eventually sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The Road of Lost Innocence is only partly the story of Mam’s horrific suffering in sexual servitude as a young adolescent. The book is also the story of her path out of that dark world and into a new reality as an activist. She currently runs two foundations - AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances) and the Somaly Mam Foundation, which together work to rescue women and children in slavery in South East Asia and to bring their cause to the world’s attention.

Slave by Mende Nazer

Much like Somaly Mam, Mende Nazer was captured and sold into slavery just as she approached adolecence. Raiders swept through her village in Sudan, killing adults and capturing children. Her family managed to escape but Nazer herself was captured and sold to a wealthy family. Nazer spent the next seven years subject to all kinds of abuse at the hands of that family. Eventually, she is sent to work for another family in London, makes contact with other Sudanese people in the UK, and manages to escape with their assistance. Nazer’s story would be shocking at any point in history, but to learn that slave trading and the savage treatment Nazer endured are alive in the 21^st century is truly appalling.

North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter by Sakie Yakota

In the 1970s and 1980s, a dozen Japanese people were captured and shipped to North Korea, to be held captive there and forced to train North Korean spies in Japanese culture and customs. As strange as this sounds, these abductions were a real life tragedy for many families. Megumi Yakota was thirteen when she disappeared. This is the tender story of her mother's devotion to searching for her. In the early 2000s, five of the kidnapped victims were released from North Korea. Megumi was not among them, but her mother still hopes to find her some day.