false 43015 0374105235 9780374105235 12051 3028 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169961441m/43015.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43015.A_Long_Way_Gone_Memoirs_of_a_Boy_Soldier 24189 Ishmael Beah 12590 3177 4 9 false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 28 19:50:27 -0700 2007 Sun Nov 23 10:50:14 -0800 2008
This heartbreaking work follows Beah from the idyllic days of his childhood, through the horrors of war, to his eventual escape to the United States. Separated from his family when the fighting between rebels and government forces reached his home in the southeastern part of the country, twelve-year-old Beah found himself part of a wandering group of displaced young boys. The hunger they suffered, the hardships endured, and the terrible bloodshed they witnessed, are described in graphic detail. Eventually recruited into the government army, Beah became an active participant in those horrors at a very young age, drugged and programmed to kill by the adults in charge. Salvation came in his selection for a camp with a program specifically designed to rehabilitate child soldiers, and when the war eventually reached his new place of safety, he was forced to flee the country altogether...

As a personal memoir, A Long Way Gone is powerful and moving. I am forced to disagree with some of the reviewers who take Beah to task for not giving more background on Sierra Leone and its civil war. While I too would like to be better informed, this book accomplishes what it sets out to do: it shows us what it feels like to be a child in a world suddenly and inexplicably descending into madness, to be helpless in the grip of forces well beyond our control. This story of one human being's suffering was emotionally powerful stuff, but it also prompted me to think about the larger issues, not of Sierra Leone, but of human nature and culture. It demonstrates how fragile our humanity can be, how easy to subvert when our ties to family and home have been violently severed. But it also demonstrates the resilience of the human spirit, how those who have both witnessed and participated in terrible acts are NOT forever lost and broken - that many of them can be found and restored again, if we but had the will and resources to effect it...]]>