
In the first three days of January 2024, I removed all the books from my home library and gave all the shelves a good dusting. While cleaning, reorganizing, and inventorying (872 books), I found myself setting books I wanted to read aside into a pile. I was really going to read them (was I making a New Year’s resolution?). With the shelves newly organized, I pulled the third book off the stack; it was Girl SoldierA Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children authored by Grace Akallo and Faith McDonnell, because of its haunting cover art. I prepared myself for the emotional roller coaster that was about to unfold. Unfortunately, I will never know the story, at least not from this book’s perspective. This book did not make my 50-page cut off. I stopped at page 38. The narrative is disconnected as each chapter alternates between Grace Akallo’s story (a Ugandan girl who was abducted in 1996 to be used as a child soldier in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel military group led by Joseph Kony. At the time of her abduction, she was attending St. Mary’s College, a Catholic boarding school) and Faith McDonnell’s, who is Director of Religious Liberty Programs at the Church Alliance for a New Sudan. With the constant interruptions of history and religion, which read like a missionary tract, Grace’s story is lost. Have you read this book? What were your thoughts?
I haven’t read it. It must have been very badly written
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In my opinion, yes it really reads like a missionary tract. Which made the book a no for me. I wanted to read the firsthand encounter of the woman who went through this terrible ordeal and survived. Not to be converted…
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I would have thought the same
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I always finish a book! My son taught me this years ago to keep on reading and you never know what you’ll discover! It works too! Everybody writes different. Press through!
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I am glad you found a practice that works for me. My philosophy is “Everything is not for everybody.”
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