Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria’s Missing Schoolgirls

Wall Street Journal correspondents Parkinson and Hinshaw debut with a riveting chronicle of the 2014 kidnapping of a group of Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram. Drawing on extensive interviews with several of the girls, the authors describe how the Islamic jihadists descended on the girls’ school in northeastern Nigeria in order to steal a brick-making machine, and ended up taking 276 of them as hostages and holding most of them for more than three years. Over 100 are still missing, and the ones who escaped or were released tell harrowing stories of starvation, beatings, and forced marriages. Parkinson and Hinshaw sketch the history of Boko Haram and its leader, Abubakar Shekau, a former child beggar; detail the complex diplomatic maneuvers to secure the release of some of the girls; and describe how the 2014 #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign, which was amplified by Mary J. Blige and Michelle Obama, brought the girls’ plight to the world’s attention and led to a large ransom being paid to the terrorist group. Written with compassion and insight, this deeply investigated account brings renewed attention to an ongoing tragedy. (Mar.)