Courageous Journey

September 15, 2008
Deng and Beny Ngor Chol, in collaboration with novelist Barbara Youree, relay their experiences as Sudanese refugees. The brief, well-paced chapters are detailed enough to help readers understand the political reasons they became refugees in Ethiopia and then Kenya. Deng, on whom the story primarily focuses, was seven when he was separated from his family and 20 when he left a refugee camp in Kenya for Kansas City, MO. Filled with action, suspense, and even romance, the book follows Deng as he is threatened by crocodiles and shot at; recounts Deng and Chol meeting fellow tribe members, relatives, and friends throughout their journeys and finding out who has survived; and portrays both Deng and Chol finding mates and falling in love in the refugee camps. In the last chapter, Youree sums up what happened to Deng, Chol, and others, although it would have been better from Deng's perspective, as readers will have developed great sympathy for him. Although maps of Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya are included, maps of the journeys that Deng took from Sudan to Ethiopia to Kenya would have been of more interest. This would make a good reading group selection. Recommended for academic and public libraries.Tonya Briggs, Oberlin Coll. Lib., OH

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2008
As children, Ayuel Leek Deng and Bgeny Ngorwitnessed unspeakable brutality, including the killing of their parents, in Sudans civil war, whichleft two million dead. The boys fled first to Ethiopia and then to Kenya, where they found safety in a UN refugee camp until, finally, in 2001, they were brought to the U.S. with more than 3,000 other lost boys of Sudan. As in They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky (2005), the refugees tell their stirring survival story quietly and without messages in a continuous narrative, reliving the drama of massacre, displacement, and hunger, but also theunexpected, heartrending reunion. Clear maps show their journey, and photos capturethe immigrants in their new home in Kansas City, with friends and family, and at college graduation. Many readers will see the contemporary connections: Is the war about religion and race or the control of oil? But the politics and the history in this story are always personal, as is the boys struggle with accepting the biblical command to love your enemy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)