A Long Way Gone is the story of the book’s author Ishmael Beah struggling to survive during the civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. He is narrating the story from some point years later as a high school student living in New York City, and he begins his tale by describing a memory from when he is ten years old in his hometown of Mogbwemo, Sierra Leone. As a child, he has started to notice war refugees passing through, fleeing from a violence has not yet experienced and foreshadowing that war will touch his life soon, too. The inciting incident that sets the plot in motion doesn’t happen until two years later. Along with his brother and their friends, Ishmael is visiting the town of Mattru Jong to participate in a talent show when they learn that their hometown has been attacked by rebels. Instead of fleeing from the violence themselves, the boys decide to return home to find their families, beginning a pattern that will continue throughout the narrative in which the boys, and Ishmael in particular, will search for their families while trying to avoid danger, constantly on the move like the refugees Ishmael observed at age ten.

The rising action consists of the boys moving from place to place in search of family and safety. First they spend time in Mattru Jong, hoping their families will meet them there. But soon Mattru Jong is attacked by rebels, and the boys have no choice but to flee, highlighting the fact that the boys’ lives are now controlled by the forces of war. They face starvation as they become increasingly desperate. Many towns are abandoned, with only the bodies of the dead left behind, introducing violence as a recurring force in their lives. Eventually Ishmael is separated from his friends and his brother, and true loneliness sets in. When he later meets up with another group of boys, some from Mattru Jong, that will become his surrogate family for a while, it emphasizes the importance of community. The fact that the boys choose to travel together despite the danger inherent in being mistaken for child soldiers suggests a deep-seated need for human connection in a situation deprived of humanity.

The rising action continues when the boys learn that some of their families are in a nearby town, but the town is attacked just as the boys approach, once again showcasing yet another horrific example of the horrors of war. Once Ishmael’s family is presumed dead, it marks a change in Ishmael; he and the other boys are alone now, and without hope, separated from their families with a brutal finality. Because of how utterly alone, devastated, and generally terrified they are, the boys are susceptible to brainwashing when they are captured by the military. Surprisingly, Ishmael turns out to be a particularly skilled killer. In a cruel twist of irony, the military persuades the boys that the rebels are less than human so they might kill them indiscriminately, thereby diminishing the boys’ own humanity in the process.

When Ishmael is rescued by people from UNICEF and brought to a rehabilitation center, he is resistant at first because he doesn’t want to feel the weight of the atrocities he helped commit. With the help of his new friend and temporary sister Esther, he finally begins to heal from his wounds, both mental and physical, and finds himself able to empathize with those he victimized. After rehabilitation, Ishmael goes to live with an uncle that he doesn’t know in Freetown. There he finds some semblance of the comfort that he has been searching for, highlighting the importance of community and connection in the healing process. Ishmael travels to the United States to share his experience as a child soldier and begins to find that storytelling may be a significant tool by which to heal, too.

The climax of the story occurs when fighting comes once again to Sierra Leone, and Ishmael decides to flee in search of a new life. Ishmael’s uncle has recently fallen ill and died, and the fighting in Freetown has intensified. Ishmael contacts Laura Simms, a storyteller living in New York City that he met while speaking at a United Nations conference. Laura agrees to help Ishmael flee Sierra Leone. Ishmael’s second journey to New York City comprises the story’s falling action. This is not an easy trip, and Ishmael is lucky to make his escape. His ability to push through and make it out of Sierra Leone reveals that he will go on to achieve a larger purpose in life. The writing of the memoir A Long Way Gone is an example of Ishmael fulfilling his mission to educate the world on the subject of child soldiers.