A Long Way Gone by Kshmael Beah and Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza

In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007), Ishmael Beah tells his story of growing up in Sierra Leone during the civil war there, in the 1990’s, and his rescue by Unicef. (966.404 Beah)

Similarly, in Left to Tell (2006), Immaculee Ilibagiza tells her story of survival during the Rwandan holocaust in 1994 and the spiritual journey that fed her soul during the three months she spent hiding. (B Illibagiza)

-Deb

A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry

This is one of my all-time favorites. The setting (mid-1970’s India), the characters (four individuals of different castes and economic levels), the plot (the title refers to the precarious balance of survival), are all complex and absorbing, somewhat like a modern-day Dickens novel. (Fiction Mistry – we keep ours on the Oprah books shelf.)

-Deb

Skeletons at the Feast, by Chris Bohjalian

Takes place in 1944-5 Poland and Germany. The plot involves the trek of a farm family and their Scottish prisoner of war (who was assigned to help them till their fields) trek from Poland westward, to avoid the arrival of the Russian army. Stories of Uri, an escaped Jew, and Cecile, a young Jewish woman prisoner struggling to survive, alternate with the family’s story. Bohjalian was inspired to write this novel after reading the diary of a family friend who lived in Poland and endured similar travails. (Fiction Bohjalian)

-Deb

The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Duncan Perry

The Boy who was raised as a dog, and other stories from a psychiatrist’s
notebook: what traumatized children can teach us about loss, love and healing, by Bruce Duncan Perry, c2006, tells fascinating true stories of children who experienced early trauma, and how child psychiatrist Perry used his understandings of brain development to help the children to heal.
(618.9289 Perry)