Betty's account, on the other hand, provides details left out in the movie, such as Betty had two sons from a previous marriage and how she didn't see the signals of Moody's temperament change when they lived in the United States. As a reader, you sympathize with her because she describes the miserable parts of her experience with such clarity and you get her feelings and reactions. I wish that I'd written this review the many years ago when I read this book, but even though time has muted the details, my memory of this book's effect is still vivid. At any rate, I loved that Betty took the time to explain Muslim holidays and customs, foods and their preparations, rules of etiquette, and even bureaucratic governmental policies. To her horror, she found herself and her four-year-old daughter, Mahtob, virtual prisoners of a man rededicated to his Shiite Moslem faith, in a land where women are near-slaves and Americans are despised.

She is the President and co-founder of One World: For Children, an organization that promotes understanding between cultures and strives to offer security and protection to children of bi-cultural marriages. And Mom always made sure that I knew that if I wanted to communicate with my father, it was always my decision. In September, while Moody was away, Betty and Mahtob traveled to the Swiss Embassy and spoke to Helen. The family was a crazy one to say the least: extreme, fanatical, superstitious, and never mind disgusting with their hygiene (but let’s not go there! After all, by all accounts, Said Mahmoody was clear, on multiple occasions, that he would find and kill her when or if she tried to escape, but not before he ensured that his daughter would be raised in a misogynistic war zone wherein she would be subject to abuse and compelled to renounce her faith, her way of life, and her place of birth.In December, two weeks after the dinner party, Rasheed informed Betty that the smuggler was unwilling to take a woman and a child on the journey over the mountains into Turkey, especially during the winter. Finding Mathob's account was much easier because it was available through various libraries; however, I had to actually purchase Betty's account because I was not as fortunate. If one of countless Muslim women who live fulfilling lives of achievement wrote a story in which religious Muslims didn't come across as demons, it would be simply discounted as propaganda; there would be no market for it.

I had watched the film version of this when it first came out and found the account so harrowing that when I re-watched Not Without My Daughter: The Harrowing True Story of a Mother's Courage I found myself wanting to read the accounts of Betty Mahmoody and her daughter Mathob Mahmoody.

I think this was my first introduction to the middle east and what it was like to be a woman in their culture. She endangered her child by staying with a mentally unstable man, not to mention visiting a country she knows absolutely nothing about. It’s still as shocking today as it was all those years ago, and while the story reads like a thriller and I found myself rooting for Betty and her daughter you have to remind yourself that this nightmare was Betty’s reality at the time and certainly no thriller for her.