I just finished a book called “A Long Way Gone.”
I have to admit that it was a hard read. From the back of the book you know right off the start it isn’t a happy story. Yet I was captivated. I would pass it on and say read it.
This is what Amazon.com said:
“This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone’s civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah’s harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army—in a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he’s brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs. The process marks out Beah as a gifted spokesman for the center’s work after his “repatriation” to civilian life in the capital, where he lives with his family and a distant uncle. When the war finally engulfs the capital, it sends 17-year-old Beah fleeing again, this time to the U.S., where he now lives. (Beah graduated from Oberlin College in 2004.)”
It was a great read. I can’t stop thinking of the life this child lead. I can’t help thinking of my Jordan, Tyler, or Sammy wondering thorough the woods, dealing with the grief of a lost family, suffering from lack of food, water and shelter. I can’t image my babies lives without us there to guide, nurture and love them. Then I have to add the horror of being a child solider. Unbelievable and yet I thank God for giving each of us the strength we need to cope with each of our challenges.
It is a book worth reading.