The stories the survivors recounted in the Florida press after their rescue, and expanded on in phone calls to their families in Cardenas, revealed terrifying details.

More impressive still, Mr. Olsen, a former bureau chief for Time magazine, does not simply dwell on the terrifying details of the case.

It was as Bey remembered it, but in terrifying detail.

Now visions of that spilled through his mind with terrifying detail.

A surveillance camera captured the gun battle in this small central California farm town in terrifying detail.

Perhaps that was why she dreamed and dreamed so vividly and with such terrifying detail.

Leonora forced herself to go back over the dream sequence in every terrifying detail.

Yet in Ms. Alexander's telling, the terrifying details of the journey come as vividly to life as ever.

"The children say they don't remember the salient, allegedly terrifying details," she told me.

An informative afterword clarifies Russo's family story and gives a bit more historical background without delving into too terrifying detail.