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    Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
    Unavailable
    Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
    Unavailable
    Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

    Written by Nando Parrado and Vince Rause

    Narrated by Josh Davis

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In the first hours there was nothing, no fear or sadness, just a black and perfect silence.

    Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team, as well as their family members and supporters, to an exhibition game in Chile had crashed somewhere deep in the Andes. He soon learned that many were dead or dying-among them his own mother and sister. Those who remained were stranded on a lifeless glacier at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, with no supplies and no means of summoning help. They struggled to endure freezing temperatures, deadly avalanches, and then the devastating news that the search for them had been called off.

    As time passed and Nando's thoughts turned increasingly to his father, who he knew must be consumed with grief, Nando resolved that he must get home or die trying. He would challenge the Andes, even though he was certain the effort would kill him, telling himself that even if he failed he would die that much closer to his father. It was a desperate decision, but it was also his only chance. So Nando, an ordinary young man with no disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snow-capped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness in an attempt to find help.

    Thirty years after the disaster Nando tells his story with remarkable candor and depth of feeling. Miracle in the Andes-a first person account of the crash and its aftermath-is more than a riveting tale of true-life adventure: it is a revealing look at life at the edge of death and a meditation on the limitless redemptive power of love.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 9, 2006
    ISBN9780739332597
    Unavailable
    Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

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    Reviews for Miracle in the Andes

    4/5

    242 ratings22 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I just finished reading Piers Paul Read's Alive (1974) a few days ago, and so fresh with names, maps and time lines, I had high hopes Miracles in the Andes would add a new dimension to this amazing story. Unfortunately I was somewhat disappointed, all the more so given the generally good reviews Miracle has been getting. It is perhaps inevitable in the shadow of Read's classic masterpiece that anything else will pale in comparison. The re-telling of events from Parrado's perspective is interesting but misses a lot - for example he was in a coma the first three days of the accident - and he doesn't seem to add much that is new to Read's version - which almost without exception is better told.Beyond a retelling of the events, I had hoped Parrado would reveal something new about himself and the other survivors, but instead if often read like hagiography, glossing over the differences among the group to show them as united friends, discounting and minimizing character defects. It reminds me of how the Catholic Church writes history of saints, and it is probably no coincidence that the survivors were from Catholic backgrounds, and saints in the minds of true believers who saw the hand of God at work in this "Miracle in the Andres". I was hoping for a more in depth psychological examination of the survivors, a sort of personality x-ray to bring them to life, to intimately know them as friend or brother. Instead there is a polite respectful distance, which is frustrating, given the intimate nature of the experience.Despite these sentiments I still recommend the book to anyone who has read Alive. Parrado's inner struggle with life and death - while not exactly original or new - is profound and worth the reminder of what is important. There are also new pictures, and an Epilogue with brief bio's of what happened to the survivors after the rescue to the present day. Whatever the faults, as the men age, and the myth grows, more books and films will appear to hopefully peel back more layers behind the "Miracle" in the Andres. But Alive remains the best book of this disaster and it is hard to imagine it ever being replaced.
    • 4/5
      Many of us have either heard or seen or read the story of the boys who's plane crashed in the Andes mountains in the 1970's, however, the original story never told us what happened after they were rescued. In this book, Parrado, one of the boys stranded on that mountain, not only walked us through the plane ride, the crash, the survival and the initial rescue, he also describes how that rescue came to be and what his life was like after he re-entered society. Parrado describes the difficulties of dealing with society after society learned exactly how the boys survived, and let's face it, cannibalism is inherently abhorrent no matter how you look at it. However, it was a choice that these young men made. The ultimately made the choice for life. Excellent book if you are looking for more that just the basic story of the incident.
    • 4/5
      This was a compelling read. Parrado gives the read a real sense of what he and others went through to survive. Parrado's voice made this a most engaging read. In fact, I read this one aloud to my husband! He gave the reader the privilege to walk in his shoes and survive, without having to have endured the walk as he did.
    • 5/5
      This story is more than the facts. It discusses the interpersonal relationships among the survivors from a first-hand account.
    • 5/5
      1974's Alive by Piers Paul Reid is one of my all-time favorite books. So when I learned that Nando Parrado himself, one of the heroic survivors, was writing a more personal account of that fateful 1972 plane crash I was curious to check it out. Would his retelling offer a profound new insight to the tragedy? Or would this be another instance of should have left well-enough alone? Fortunately, it's the former.
    • 4/5
      If you've read Alive, or seen the movie, then you know the basic events of this story. What makes this book such a compelling read is that it focuses on the author's internal struggle during his ordeal in the mountains. It is a very inspiring story well-told. My only criticism, and it is a minor one, is that the author does get a bit heavy handed with his theme in a couple of places. But that theme, that love is the most important thing in this life, is such a good one that perhaps it bears being hammered home so forcefully.
    • 4/5
      I started this book in the morning and finished it in the evening. I really couldn't put it down. I was somewhat familiar with the story, having seen the movie, but reading it from the perspective of a survivor was different. I still plan to read Alive, but I'm glad I read this one first. It's an amazing story, and actually life-affirming and inspiring instead of sad and depressing.
    • 5/5
      Reading this won't make you want to climb mountains. As a matter of fact, flying over them will be a little jitter-inducing for a while. These kids crashed into the Andes and fought their way out. At first glance they seem stronger than you could ever be, yet by the end you see bits of yourself in them. A great book for when life seems insurmountable.
    • 5/5
      Gripping and detailed journey of Nando and comrades. This book really gets you in the head of the narrator and you feel his emotion through his words. HIGHLY recommend for ages 14 and up.
    • 4/5
      In 1973, just a year after the fateful crash in the Andes, Piers Paul Read wrote the now epic account of this survivors' story, Alive. Read's story is universally acclaimed as a masterful account of this epic tale of cannibalism and the power of human will. It's a third person account and it has taken 30 years for one of the sixteen survivors to tell their memoir. This task was finally assumed by Nando Parrado, one of the two men who left the relative security of the plane's fuselage to scale the mighty Andes mountain in search of a rescuer. He recounts in vivid detail and brutal honesty his personal thoughts and feelings of hunger, thirst, despair, hope, fear, dread, and every motion in between. This first person account is vivid, riveting, and a page turner, even if you have read Alive and know the story. It's spiritual and philosophical too. He concludes that love is what saved him and exhorts readers to live a life of love and to truly live each moment. I was really touched by Parrado's unflinching introspection and modesty and his desire to impart hard earned lessons to us all.
    • 4/5
      What courage, a well written biography of an appalling situation to find themselves in. The choices that they had to make must have been heart rending
    • 1/5
      9 hours, 45 minutes: The first disc, ( total of 8 cds ) was so boring I could not bear to listen to the rest. The first paragraph was good.... then it went on and on and on and on with background of his family. I lost interest and stopped listening. Maybe someone who listened to the whole book would have another opinion.
    • 4/5
      This was a great read. Nando Parrado does a fabulous job of evoking the emotions that he was going through as he struggled to survive in the harshest conditions that I can imagine anyone surviving in. In the book, he describes the events from the plane crash on, drawing on the history of the people he is talking about to help the reader gain context for peoples actions.

      I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys books about survival or about overcoming huge obstacles to accomplish what you need to do.
    • 4/5
      Even in the minds of the co-authors, this book is overshadowed by another, Piers Paul Read's Alive, which told this story of a plane crash and the months that followed in the Andes using interviews of the survivors. Nando Parrado, one of those survivors called Alive a "magnificent book" and said he had not tried to tell his own story for 30 years because he felt that book already covered "all the public needed to know." Vince Rause in his acknowledgments admitted wondering if another book was necessary since Alive "told that story in such exhaustive detail, and with such definitive scope and power." I read Alive decades ago--it was assigned reading in high school, and it made an indelible impression. There was little in this account that was a surprise to me, because I remembered so many of the details of that other book, and I'd certainly say if you're going to read only one account of this story, it should be that one--it's wonderfully and sensitively written. But Rouse said he thought another account would be worthwhile if Parrado was really willing to open up and take you back on that mountain and help you think what he thought and felt what he felt and take you along on the spiritual and physical journey he took, and in that I think it succeeds wonderfully. In fact, at certain points I was even moved close to tears, and that isn't easy. Alive emphasized the importance of their shared faith in the ordeal they underwent. There were 45 passengers and crew on that plane, and within a week there were only 27 survivors with all the food running out. To stay alive, those remaining had to resort to eating the bodies of the dead. To allow themselves to do that, some clung to their faith, even trying to see their taking nourishment from their dead as a form of communion. It was different for Parrado, who would take his survival into his own hands and with one companion make a near impossible climb over the mountain to go get help. Certainly, if there was one survivor of that ordeal whose story I'd want to know, it's his--because he didn't just wait to die. For him in the end the miracle of the Andes wasn't from God. He wrote that he found the "opposite of death is not mere living... courage or faith or human will." It's love. In the end, it was his love for the family that would be grieving for him that pushed him to endure. Parrado's account of the psychology of survival reminded me of nothing so much of accounts I've read of survival in concentration camps--which went well beyond the mere physical. This doesn't to my mind replace Alive, but it's a book well worth having together with it on your shelf.
    • 5/5
      Wow! I read Alive when it was first published, but was not prepared for how viscerally I would respond to THIS memoir. Parrado lays bare his soul in describing his (and his teammates) ordeal.
    • 4/5
      This is a familiar story that was related in Alive by Piers Paul Read and in a movie of the same title, about a plane chartered by a rugby team in 1972 that went down on one of the highest peaks of the Andes, leaving many of the passengers injured but alive. Parrado was one of those passengers. This is his story. When they heard news on a radio that the search had been called off, he and others decided they had to climb out of the mountains if they were to have any chance of survival. Parrado and another young man made a heroic, miraculous trek to reach help. The sensational news was they they had (necessarily) resorted to cannibalism, but although that had been a difficult decision, it was not the most horrific they had suffered. The frigid temperatures, an avalanche that killed eight and left the fuselage, their only shelter, buried, the terrible injuries, the lack of everything they needed, was considerably worse. The biographical details at the beginning allows the reader to relate so much more to the disaster by getting to know some of the individuals. Also appreciated was the final update on the survivors. A few years ago I saw a movie of the story. Parrado's personal account delivered a more powerful account of the despair, desolation, helplessness and the agonizing trek out.
    • 4/5
      No one will ever tell this story better than Piers Paul Reid, but Parrado and his ghostwriter do try to add to the record. There were different factions and different leaders on the mountain and that's one of the most interesting things about the story, but Parrado skirts these difficult issues because he still feels so responsible to the other men in the group. Who refused to work? Why did the others still look after them? I wish that Parrado would tell us more about conflicts like this. As a result, this book is not as interesting as it could have been, although the nature of the story itself still makes this version of the narrative worth telling. The mountain climbing sections are harrowing: I'm a climber, and these young men made EVERY mistake in the book and still survived!
    • 5/5
      Incredible story of survival and the human spirit.
    • 5/5
      A simultaneously crushingly depressing and amazingly inspiring and hopeful book. The writing is precise, and throughout the pages you must remind yourself everything you are reading is a true story. Not light reading, but certainly recommended.
    • 5/5
      An amazing story of loss, love, struggle and survival. Mr. Parrado tells his story of his time on the mountain and how he survived. What make this book different than others is that he is one of the two people who climbed out of the cordillera and hiked 45 miles to safety .
    • 3/5
      Perhaps even a 3.5* but quite a few times I just wanted the author to get on with it.
    • 5/5
      If you’ve never read Alive by Piers Paul Read or even if you have read that book, it would be so well worth your time to read Miracle in the Andes, the first person narrative of Nando Parrado’s survival of a plane crash in the Andes, the extraordinarily high mountain range of South America. The story is compelling, of course, but this memoir, written together with Vince Rouse, provides a heartbreaking recollection of what it feels like to be so close to death yet desire, with all one’s heart, not to die despite overwhelming odds against survival. Even though I knew details of Parrado’s story, reading this book never semed like a “rerun”. I was there in those frigid mountains with him all the way. I suffered with him, both physically and emotionally. I found it amazing that Parrado and Rause could together write a book which felt as if it happened just yesterday although this accident occurred in 1972. In the end, it was rewarding to learn that the survivors have thrived in the many years following their plane accident. Their survival in the Andes was truly a miracle.