Until Death Do Us Part

Ingrid Betancourt, a senator and a presidential candidate in Colombia, grew up among diplomats, literati, and artists who congregated at her parents' elegant home in Paris, France. Intellectually, Ingrid was influenced by Pablo Neruda and other Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcma Marquez, who frequented her parents' social circle. From this charmed life, Ingrid Betancourt - not yet thirty, happily married to a French diplomat, and a mother of two children - returned to her native country in the late 1980s. On what was initially just a visit, she found her country under internal siege from the drug cartels and the corrupt government that had allowed them to flourish. After seeing what had become of Colombia's democracy, she didn't feel she could leave. Until Death Do Us Part is the deeply personal story of a woman who gave up a life of comfort and safety to become a political leader in a country being slowly demolished by terrorism, violence, fear, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness. Now forty, Ingrid Betancourt has been elected and reelected as a representative and as a senator in Colombia's national legislature. She has founded a political party that has openly confronted Colombia's leaders and has earned the respect of a nation. And now she has become a target of the establishment and the drug cartels behind it. Forced to move her children out of Colombia for protection against death threats, Ingrid Betancourt remained and continued to fight the po