Louise's Reviews > A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

By age 16 Ishmael Beah must have had more scrapes with death than 99% of the people on the planet. The first is how he was not at home when rebel forces destroyed his village and an unknown number of people in it and he fled in search of his family.

He describes running, foraging and encounters with friends from his village, tribal leaders and animals. He almost finds his family. There are scenes of daily life in an encampment of government forces.

As the rebels took control of more area, being a soldier became necessary to preserve the safety of the people who had taken him in. He was trained to think of revenge for his family by slicing banana trees. He forgets how many times he put this into practice. Then to get the food and drugs needed to stay alive and keep free of physical and emotional pain, soldiering became indistinguishable from looting.

His eventual assignment to the UN and what seems to be something like a treatment program is vague. Is security really such low that the patients (if this is what they are) can kill each other and guards too?

The book ends in a whirlwind. He sketches getting to NY to speak, with other children of war, at the UN. He returns to Sierra Leone only to meet more war and to flee to Ghana where he leaves the reader hanging. How he gets back to the US, gets adopted and educated and starts a career is not covered..

I read this as many in the extreme right are talking about a civil war. They think it will cleanse the nation of those they don’t agree with. As Beah says, he sought revenge, creating families also seeking revenge creating more revenge seekers. Radicalized Americans have no idea that once unleashed this genie doesn’t get back in the bottle easily. Beah shows how civil war leads only to misery and waste.