Parents' Guide to A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

As A LONG WAY GONE begins, Ishmael Beah is 12 and living with his mother and two brothers in a rural town in Sierra Leone, West Africa. He loves dancing, rap music, and Shakespeare and can recite monologues from Julius Caesar and Macbeth. The civil war that's gripping Sierra Leone still seems a long way off. But while he and his older brother are away, rebels attack the town, his family disappears, and the boys are left to fend for themselves. Traveling from village to village often "so hungry it hurts to drink water," they are separated during a rebel attack. Now alone, Ishmael wanders for weeks until meeting boys he knew from school. Joining forces, the boys look for somewhere, anywhere, they can feel safe. They think they've found it in a town controlled by government soldiers. That "safety" comes at a high price, as the boys are armed with AK-47s and turned into young but lethal killing machines. By 15, Ishmael's life has changed so radically that "my squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed." When a group of UNICEF workers arrive at his camp, Ishmael is chosen as one of the boys to be taken to a rehabilitation center that works with boy soldiers. At 16, his life begins anew as he struggles with an addiction to drugs, terrible nightmares, and the enormous challenge of learning to live a life that no longer revolves around killing or being killed.