A Long Way Gone.

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A LONG WAY GONE By Ishmael Beah (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007)

"This isn't your fault, you know. It really isn't. You'll get through this." Fifteen-year-old Ishmael Beah constantly hears these reassurances from staff members at a rehabilitation center for former child soldiers in the African country of Sierra Leone. But Beah's frequent violent outbursts quickly illustrate an intense view of the difficult process of deprogramming a child's mind that has been brainwashed "to kill or be killed."

Beah is an eloquent writer who paints clear and poignant pictures of each circumstance he encountered on his journey as a boy who went from fearing the violence of the civil war in his country at age 12 to reveling in the torture of other human beings after being recruited by the government army at age 13.

Fortunately Beah did not write A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier solely about his experiences killing rebels with an AK-47. Instead Beah spends the first half of the book letting us see the innocence of a child wandering aimlessly through the forest, trying to escape the brutality of rebels who are raiding villages. We feel his loss when his parents and two brothers are killed by the rebels. We are amused by his affinity for memorizing the lyrics of American hip-hop songs and reciting the monologues from various Shakespeare plays.

Beah's gift for expressing his thoughts becomes his ticket out of Sierra Leone. The rehabilitation center's director asks him to give talks to visitors at the facility about the plight of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and he is eventually asked to speak before the United Nations in New York City, where he lives today. He received his bachelor's degree in political science from Oberlin College in 2004.

Beah's memoir is a must-read for anyone who wants an education in the psychological impact of war on children.