The Stolen Years

While piloting a light aircraft from South Africa, John Wight and two passengers were arrested after making an emergency landing in Madagascar. Suspected of being South African mercenaries with an agenda to overthrow the government, they were treated with hostility and brutality. Incarcerated under terrifying conditions, they endured beatings, starvation, and solitary confinement. 

"The Stolen Years" is the true story of John's struggle for freedom and the survival of a new marriage in the face of seven years' separation. Through a desperate escape plan, negotiations to exchange Nelson Mandela for the South African prisoners, years without communications with the outside world, and the penury of prison life they were tested to the extreme. It is a harrowing narrative of injustice, isolation, endurance, and courage where hours is countered by faith, and hope makes survival possible. In 1996 the Wight family emigrated from South Africa to Anchorage, Alaska where they have made their home.