The 15:17 to Paris: In the Face of Fear Ordinary People Can Do the Extraordinary (2016) is the true account of events on 21 August 2015 on the 15:17 train from Amsterdam to Paris.
On the train was a man with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a pistol, a box cutter, and plenty of ammunition. On the train were 554 passengers. Also on the train were three American lifelong friends on holiday: two off-duty soldiers (Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos) and a university student (Anthony Sadler). The book is in three parts, focusing on each of the Americans, interspersed with information about the attacker. Written in the third person, with author Jeffrey E Stern, it is the incident from each person’s different point of view.
All three American men experience moments of extreme clarity and yet moments of no memory at all. All experience both the acceleration of time and time freezing.
It is about decisions made, and changed, and how the three Americans came to be in the right place at the right time.
This is their account of how they stopped an act of terror, after Damien A. and French-American Mark Moogalian’s initial actions (he was shot in the back of the neck), and British businessman Chris Norman’s assistance. It is about how the Americans reacted, and how they attended to Moogalian to keep him alive. It also includes the aftermath, their recognition as heroes, and their ‘celebrity’ status.
It is not a brilliant book, but it tries to take a pyschological and internal position – what they were thinking, why they took the actions they did, and what was in the direct vision and in their peripheral vision during the event.
It also includes information from their parents about their sons growing up together – Stone and Skarlatos were raised by single mothers. The men tell about their schooling, their studies, what they excelled at, what they failed at, what their dreams and aspirations were, and how they changed and developed over time.
I liked the fact that this is a mother-son, father-son type of book, in addition to being a book about heroes. I also liked the way it discusses the previous training and education of each person – and how this contributed to their knowledge on the day of the event, when everything came together individually and collectively – the team work.
In one sense, it is interesting because the three Americans try to be as honest as they can, and in another, it lacks the cohesion that makes it a superlative novel - which is understandable. This is also the case in director Clint Eastwood’s 2018 movie, based on the book, in which the real people play themselves. In doing so, readers and viewers get more of an ordinary-person’s raw story, rather than a slick book or Hollywood movie.
MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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