The book is a firsthand account of Beah's time as a child soldier during the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s.

Beah was 12 years old when he fled his village after it was attacked by "rebels", members of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

Three years later, UNICEF rescued him from the unit and put him into a rehabilitation program that helped him find his uncle, who would eventually adopt him.

After armed forces attack his home village, he, his brother, and friends are left orphans and wander around seeking shelter.

Kanei, Musa, Saidu, Jumah, Alhaji, and Moriba: Ishmael's friends from his home village whom he meets in the wilderness after being separated from his initial group.

The book starts with Ishmael Beah, his older brother Junior, and their friend Talloi traveling from their village of Mogbwemo to Mattru Jong in order to perform in a talent show.

Ishmael then learns from a woman from his hometown that Junior, his younger brother Ibrahim, and his parents are safe in another village with many others from Mattru Jong.

They are then chased into the forest by remaining RUF soldiers, and Gasemu dies from being shot, leaving Ishmael more saddened.

The lieutenant said that in order for the people to survive, they must contribute to the war effort by enlisting in the army; escape was not an option.

By doing this, the lieutenant secures many child soldiers, the weapon of choice for both the RUF and the Sierra Leone Armed Forces.

Ishmael becomes a junior lieutenant for his skill in executing prisoners of war and is put in charge of a small group of other child soldiers.

In January 1996, during one of the roll calls, a group of men wearing UNICEF shirts round up several boys and takes them to a shelter in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, where they and several other child soldiers are to be rehabilitated.

It is through this connection and his numerous counseling experiences with Esther that Ishmael eventually turns away from his violent self and starts to heal from his mental wounds.

It is during this time that Ishmael is chosen to speak to the United Nations (UN) in New York City about his experiences as a child soldier and the other problems plaguing his country.

Believing that he can no longer stay in Freetown for fear of either becoming a soldier again or of being killed by his former army friends if he refuses, Ishmael decides to get in contact with Laura Simms.

He then escapes Sierra Leone and crosses the border into Guinea, where he eventually makes his way to the United States and his new life abroad.

But the miracle remains: a teenager can be plucked from such an awful existence, transported to another nation, obtain a college degree, give literary voice to his horrific experiences—and teach us all something about humanity".

Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the top 10 nonfiction books of 2007, ranking it at number three, and praising it as "painfully sharp", and its ability to take "readers behind the dead eyes of the child-soldier in a way no other writer has.

The report claimed that Beah's village was destroyed in 1995 rather than 1993, and that given the more compressed time frame, he could not have been a soldier for more than a couple of months, rather than the years that he describes in his book.

Questions were also raised about Beah's description of a battle between child soldiers at a UNICEF camp, in which six people were said to have been killed.

Witnesses interviewed by The Australian said that such an event in a UNICEF camp would have drawn significant attention in Sierra Leone, but no independent verification of such a battle could be obtained.

Investigations by other publications also failed to discover other evidence of such a battle, and UNICEF, while supportive of Beah in general, also said that it had not been able to verify this aspect of his story.

[8] The Australian's claims were subsequently denied in a statement issued by Beah, in which he called into question the reliability of the sources quoted.

Beah's adoptive mother also reaffirmed her belief in the validity of the dates, quoting two Sierra Leonean sources who corroborated the chronology of events given in his book.

The source cited by the publisher, Leslie Mboka, national chairman of the Campaign for Just Mining, was in fact quoted by The Australian.

Mboka, when subsequently contacted by the publisher, reported to them that he had vigorously supported Beah's chronology when interviewed by The Australian, and had challenged the paper for bias.

[10] However, some of his defenders as well as his critics allowed for the possibility that his account was not entirely accurate, stating that the main point was that he had drawn attention to an issue that was of vital importance.

[16] This is significant because Beah published his memoirs in 2007, and therefore was at risk of being charged with international war crimes by the United Nations (UN).

[17] Therefore, Beah was at risk of international legal repercussions if he admitted to engaging in wartime rape and other forms of violence against women.

Neil Boothby, an academic who has undertaken extensive research into children and war, said that while all of the atrocities described by Beah have occurred at various points, it would be highly unusual for one child to have experienced them all.