Mariatu Kamara was born in the country of Sierra Leone, a city wracked by civil war from 1999 - 2002. The rebel army made strong use of child soldiers, a trend that many people know about as a result of A Long Way Gone an incredibly moving book by Sierra Leonean Ishmael Beah. He was one of the boy soldiers.

Mariatu on the other hand was just an 11-year-old girl when her village was attacked by the rebels. The village was destroyed, many of the villagers were tortured and/or killed, the surviving citizens fled into the countryside before finding sanctuary in refugee camps, and she had her hands cut off by the rebels.

She, and many children like her, were left as symbols to the country's leadership about what the rebels could accomplished. Mariatu fought through the pain and, with the help of someone from a nearby villager, found her way to a clinic. From there, she receives treatment before ending up in a refugee camp near Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.

Readers join her as she tells her harrowing journey. It is an internal one in which she is confronted with being a victim of war and in which she seems to lose everything including her family. It is also a physical one in which she travels from her village and on to Freetown before trips to London and Toronto give her access to education and prosthetics.

It is an amazingly moving memoir of young lady who has faced adversity and proved that she can survive. It is well-written, though presented in very simple prose. In the process, it captures her bruised innocence, which has evolved and developed into a strong will to do everything she can to fight for the rights for the youth and women victims of war.

I thought this was incredibly inspiring. Mariatu has faced so much difficulty because of what was happening in her country. To make matters worse, people made assumptions about her because of where she was from and her experiences. I had trouble putting it aside even as my bedtime came and went.