Published in 2007, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is a firsthand account of the Sierra Leone Civil War told by Ishmael Beah.
Beah, a young Sierra Leonean was touched by the war in 1993 when he was just twelve years old. His home village of Mogbwemo, located in the southwestern region of Sierra Leone, was attacked by Revolutionary United Front Soldiers (RUF) while he and his brother were in a neighboring village. This was the first of many attacks that Beah witnessed as he traveled the Sierra Leone countryside with a small group of friends. Beah never saw his family again. It is presumed that they died soon after in a different village raid.
In January of 1996, at the age of...
