"A Long Way Gone," by Ishmael Beah

Beah's book is a memoir of this young African's years as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. It is a brutal, sad tale of how children are exploited and dehumanized in order to become canon fodder for adults who have political or greed-related ambitions in so many third world countries today. It is also an inspiring tale of redemption for a fraction of the more fortunate children who are able to be rehabilitated.

Beah's tale starts out in the gold mining region of Sierra Leone where he and his brother grew up living with his father. At the age of 12 rebel forces attacked his town, burned down all the homes and attacked the people. Many were killed, while a few boys were pressed into service. Ishmael, his brother and several friends managed to escape and started a very long journey walking towards the coast and away from the fighting.

Everywhere they went they were treated with suspicion, since so many boys had been recruited to be rebels. They were just stray refugees trying to get away from the fighting. A couple of times they were brought before tribal chiefs and were very nearly executed as spies.

After months of travel by foot and occasional stops in friendly villages, they reached what they hoped was a peaceful community when they were captured by army forces and pressed into service. The process of brutalizing the boys, plying them with drugs so they would act in robotic fashion, and the unspeakable acts of violence that they were forced to commit make this book a difficult, but very powerful read.

Eventually, Ishmael and several other boys are mustered out of the military by a UNICEF inspector, and given a second chance to be children at a school for rehabilitated war orphans in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Eventually, Ishmael is repatriated with his uncle's family on the outskirts of the city. Ishmael is chosen to go to New York City to attend a conference on child soldiers and meets the woman who will eventually bring him to the U.S. permanently and adopt him.

Before the happy ending, though, is more fighting, this time, within Freetown, which sets the boy to fleeing again several months after he returns to Sierra Leone. A harrowing journey to Guinea leads eventually to a chance to contact his benefactress in New York City and a new life.

The memoir is a remarkable piece of writing for someone who spoke primarily Krio, an old slave version of English brought to Sierra Leone by the black colonists from America who settled the land in the late 1700s. Ishmael was able to complete his high school education in New York once he emigrated, and then attended Oberlin College in Ohio.

He is still a very young man, in his late 20s, and is working in the field of humanitarian relief.

This book was chosen as the One Community, One Book selection for this year in Iowa City, and it has been a very inspirational, and thought-provoking choice.

Liz Nichols