This story begins with Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys, being bound and gagged, not in Sudan, but in Atlanta, Georgia where he was attending college. He blends his memories of Sudan with the circumstance he finds himself in, being held against his will by a boy who was about the same age Valentino was when he was facing the atrocities of war.

The memoir tells, in the young boy’s voice, what it was like to live in the Dinka tribe in the village of Marial Bal in Sudan. In 1983 the second Sudanese civil war decimated Deng’s village, killing his parents and leaving him alone to live as one of the 20,000 Lost Boys who walked thousand of miles to try to find safety. Most of these boys were no older than 10, many not strong enough to withstand the dangers of starvation, dehydration, lions, and the Arab militia.

The reader is not bombarded with non-stop grotesque war stories, although there are many, but it builds an understanding of what it was like for a young boy to live through the impossible, and to end up in America with hope.

Julie