Life Changing Read

A while back while getting my usual morning Starbucks I observed the featured book of the month. This book immediately peaked my interest. I had just finished watching the movie Blood Diamond and this book was titled A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. I picked up the book while waiting on my coffee and read the back cover. I was hooked and had to read it. The storyline from Blood Diamond that captured me was that of the son Dia who was kidnapped by the RUF and turned into a boy soldier. This book is a first hand account from Ishmael Beah, a boy soldier.

This is how wars are fought now: by children, tramatized, hopped-up on drugs, and weilding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What does a war look like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But it is rare to fine a first-person accout from someone who endured this hell and survived.

In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a powerfully gripping story: At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation cener, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain humanity, and, finally to heal.

I highly recommend this book; it was truly life changing and eye-opening.

http://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374105235/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-4350500-8229264?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194754797&sr=8-1