The news media and the nation would later call the site of the largest terrorist attacks in United States history by the name “ground zero.” The firefighters and other first responders who rushed to the scene when two 110-floor buildings collapsed into 14.6 acres of mangled steel and concrete would call it “the Pit.”

But when Andrew Columbia, a pastor and retired New York City police officer, arrived that Tuesday morning in September, those names hadn’t yet emerged from ...

When she was 24 years old, Heather Mercer was one of two American women in a group of eight international aid workers and 16 Afghans captured by the Taliban. One month later, a terrorist organization protected by the Taliban launched a successful attack on the United States that shifted the course of history for both nations, and Mercer became briefly famous. She was, for a moment, a kind of icon of the American plight, hostage to this unknown group with unknown aims.

She and the other aid workers ...