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?
