A Long Way Gone

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73. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah

What a powerful book.

You know this kind of stuff happens - young kids are forced into warfare and and experience horrors that few of us will ever see. But knowing, in some abstract way, that it happens is very different from reading a memoir of a boy who lived it.

It's heart-wrenching to imagine Beah's life: one day he's a happy-go-lucky 12 year old getting ready to perform with his friends in a talent show, and the next, he hears that rebels have attacked his home village of Mogbwemo, Sierra Leone. By the time he's 13, he's seen men, women and children murdered, cheated death himself and spent months on the run, hoding from the rebels. He is picked up by government forces and, after a brief period of safety and stability, turned into a soldier.

Beah's story is incredibly hard to read, but that difficulty makes it *necessary* to read.

http://www.alongwaygone.com/index.html
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