On Sept. 11 it will have been one year since seven Albertans and one American were kidnapped while working on an oil pipeline in Ecuador; they were held hostage for over three months. Edmonton journalists Shawn Ohler and Vicki Hall followed the story from the day it broke, and they’ve related the events in 100 Days in the Jungle.

For the most part, the book follows the lives of the captives, giving the reader a firsthand perspective on the life of a hostage. The men’s typical day consisted of two meals of usually burnt rice, beans, monkey, piranha; walking for hours in the dead of night; and sleeping under a tarp as an armed guerrilla watched over them. Along the way they were attacked by all sorts of insects and develop “crotch rot” from not bathing. Two almost died of illness, and all were traumatized by the experience. Ohler and Hall also cover the stress that afflicted the families back home – like the hostages in the jungle, they played the waiting game and clung to hope.

One downside to this book is that Ohler and Hall focus mainly on Rod Dunbar, one of the captives, and his wife, Jane, almost to the detriment of everyone else in the narrative. Some of the men seem to disappear during their captivity, mentioned so rarely that the reader may forget about them. The writing, too, is uneven: actions are foreshadowed for no apparent reason, and descriptions are sometimes needlessly repeated in order to emphasize an obvious point. Ohler and Hall are at their best when they fade into the background, letting readers experience the story for themselves. More often, though, the prose is over the top and melodramatic. Luckily, the story is strong enough to usually transcend such mishaps in the telling.