A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

Susan's Comments: I’m not a huge non-fiction reader. Luckily for me, A Long Way Gone reads like a novel, an improbable novel, which I found fascinating. Ishmael Beah was a typical, middle-class twelve-year-old boy in Sierra Leone when a civil war broke out in the early 1990s. The fighting reached his village while he was away from home. He was separated from most of his family but at least amongst friends, fellow teenage boys, and his older brother. They journey together through the countryside and become increasingly aware that the adults in the villages they pass through (while avoiding rebel and government armies) are fearful of them—a result of the armies’ recruitment and training of child soldiers who terrorize the countryside.

Ishmael eventually loses contact with his brother and friends as the story follows his travels around the unrecognizable country trying to find his family and avoid detection. He almost makes it to his family but is retained by the government army and trained as a child soldier. He holds back little on the atrocities he witnessed and participated in before being rescued by UNICEF and “retrained” for civilized society.

His story is amazing, sad, and ultimately triumphant. I find it all the more compelling because he is two years younger than I am. As I was reading, I continually thought about what I was doing (playing in the backyard, going to school, eating well, etc.) while he was wandering virtually alone through war-torn Sierra Leone. Beah’s experiences can help put your life in perspective. Check status at GPL