A Long Way Gone; Memoirs of a boy soldier:Ishmael Beah

This was very well written and needed to be written. It is the Biography of Ishmael Beah during the 1990's in Sierra Leone's civil war. I appreciated how the story was told. It is in a linear order, but then after leaving the army the atrocities of war are told through flashbacks. This mimics the way he experienced the events since he was on drugs and caffeine pills while in doing the fighting and had very little emotional responses as the events transpired. Once something triggers a memory he has to deal with it, years after the event. This book leaves a lot of unanswered questions, I wanted to know if he saw his aunt again and what happened to that family. A boy’s village is taken over by the rebel army and he wanders the country with a band of boys searching for news of his family. He comes to the town they fled to and as he comes into town there are gunshots and fires. I am still bothered by how close he was to reuniting with his parents and brothers when the town was overtaken and no one survived. He is then taken in by the country’s army and becomes a boy soldier. All the children are then taken into the capital to be rehabilitated. He meets up with his uncle, who then dies when the rebel’s take over the capital. This was a very powerful story.