Compassion International employee Dan Woolley made a near-fatal move when he switched hotels in Haiti last January. With Jennifer Schuchmann, Woolley tells the story of his rescue after being trapped for 65 hours when the earth shook Jan. 12, 2010, in Unshaken: Rising From the Ruins of Haiti’s Hotel Montana (978-0-310-33097-4, $22.99, Zondervan).

It was only Woolley’s second day in the country, which he was visiting with a colleague to record stories of Compassion’s work, when 230,000 people were killed in the 7.0 earthquake. He had planned to stay in a different hotel, but was forced to move when his hotel reservation was switched. The relief agency worker suffered serious head and leg injuries when the quake struck—and suffered the loss of a colleague, who was killed instantly. 

With two young boys at home—and wife Christy prone to depression—Woolley did everything he could to survive, treating his injuries with the help of a first-aid iPhone app and employing survival techniques he had learned from watching Bear Grylls’ Man vs. Wild.

Woolley was able to pray with others beneath the rubble and shared the gospel with a Haitian survivor in the elevator next to the one in which Woolley was trapped.

While some of the others were pulled out of the hotel, Woolley seemed to have been forgotten by his would-be rescuers, but eventually a search-and-rescue team freed him.

With emotions ranging from confusion to full-blown panic during his ordeal, at one point Woolley felt that God commanded him to “Worship Me.” When he did, he was able to release the fear of leaving his family behind and entrusted them to God’s care. 

“My questions were resolved,” he wrote. “My fears were gone. It’s not that I understood how God would make something good from my death, but I knew that, because of his power and love, he would. … My Father would make this situation work out for the good. Guaranteed.” And he felt the same for the people of Haiti—that God would bring good for them, too.

Unshaken also tells of his family’s ordeal back home in Colorado, where they awaited word of his fate and kept Woolley’s name in the national consciousness through media outlets such as Good Morning America. 

Interwoven with the story of what was happening beneath the rubble are flashbacks to the first years of the Woolleys’ marriage when his wife suffered from clinical depression and threatened to take her own life.

The book, which concludes with Woolley’s tearful reunion with his wife in a Miami hospital and the media blitz that followed, features never-before-seen photos from beneath the hotel and notes from his wife and children that were never released to the media. 

To order, call Zondervan at 800-727-1309, or visit www.zondervan.com.

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