When Jon and Tracy Willems’ daughter Hanna ventured across the world for what was supposed to be an exciting year of working abroad in Egypt, things quickly took an unexpected turn, and the family found themselves in the middle of a waking nightmare. Falsely apprehended at customs for suspected drug trafficking, Hanna was placed in an Egyptian jail under unthinkable conditions with no tether to the outside world. As Jon and Tracy struggled to put together the pieces of where their daughter had gone and what horrible fate might await her, Hanna sat thousands of miles away in a crowded and filthy cell. So began Jon and Tracy’s fight for their daughter’s freedom. But they were not alone.
What could have easily been a story of a family’s hardship and terror is instead a story of God’s grace during their most trying days. At its core, When We Could Not See the Moon is about a family cast in darkness amid the unimaginable situation Hanna found herself in. It’s a story of how faith united people across the world and worked through them to provide a guiding light throughout the journey.
Though names, locations, and other key elements have been changed or fictionalized to protect those who worked so fiercely to bring Hanna home, the Willems’ story is otherwise entirely based in fact. Encompassing the perspectives of parents Jon and Tracy Willems, sister Taylor, and Hanna herself, this harrowing true story captures all the defining characteristics of humanity: despair, distrust, and suffering but also faith, hope, compassion, and community. Dynamic and engaging with excerpts from the journal Hanna kept throughout this unbelievable series of events, When We Could Not See the Moon will speak to parents, people of faith, warriors for justice—and anyone who finds themselves lost in the dark, desperately searching for the light.
Savannah Spidalieri is an author and ghostwriter. Raised on the forested trails of the Pacific Northwest and the banks of the Shenandoah River, Savannah currently shares her central Virginia home with her husband, daughter, and pets as well as far too many houseplants. She studied creative writing and publishing and printing arts at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. While at school, Savannah spent late nights on her writing coursework and early mornings on the lake with the varsity crew team. She is a co-founder of Haunted Waters Press, which is not a publisher of ghost stories but instead takes its name from one of her favorite pieces of literature, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. Still working on her own solo debut novel, Savannah enjoys ghostwriting and collaborating with authors who have powerful stories to tell and need someone to help bring them to the page. Savannah loves puzzles and mysteries and just “figuring things out” in general, and had she not chosen a career so deeply steeped in the written word, she would have been a detective. She might still like to try that one day.
