NEW YORK – At 33, Ishmael Beah has a radiant smile and laughs easily and often.

That’s especially striking if you’ve read his 2007 best-selling memoir,

A Long Way Gone, about being forced into becoming a “boy soldier” in Sierra Leone’s vicious civil war 20 years ago

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2014/01/08/radiance-of-tomorrow-by-ishmael-beah/4360475/