Hostage in Taipei : A True Story of Forgiveness and Hope

The story of the Taipei hostage crisis that became one of Taiwan’s biggest news stories ever, these events thrust the Alexander family into the media spotlight.
Colonel McGill Alexander was serving as a South African diplomat in Taiwan in the late 1990s. His family felt safe there – until Taiwan’s most-wanted criminal, Chen Chin-hsing, broke into their home and held them at gunpoint, using the diplomatic family as pawns in a desperate effort to free his imprisoned wife. Used as human shields during a gun battle between the killer and the trigger-happy Taiwanese police, McGill and his daughter, Melanie, were shot. After a grueling 26 hours, the entire family was freed. Chen was captured and found guilty of multiple crimes. The book includes on-the-scene news photos as well as personal, behind-the-scenes photos. As Christian believers, the Alexanders showed Taiwan and the rest of the world a stunning example of Christ’s forgiveness in the midst of terror, violence and revenge. A re-enactment of this hostage crisis was broadcast by National Geographic Channel in their Locked Up Abroad series of docudramas (2008).