Though the MRTA usually tried to avoid violence in its quest for social justice in Peru, it was responsible for the deaths of nearly 200 people before its own demise. At the heart of this book are two equally compelling dramas: the MRTA's months-long siege of the Japanese Embassy in Lima in 1996 and 1997, and the strange story of American Lori Berenson's alleged involvement with the group and subsequent imprisonment in the country's notorious terrorist prisons.