The book offers a devastating story of war through the eyes of a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Ishmael Beah tells how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and became a soldier.

The book focuses on like what war is like through the eyes of a child soldier, and how does one become a killer?

The book offers a first-person account from someone who came through “this hell” and survived.

This is an extraordinary and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.