From Publishers Weekly
In this compilation of stories from the civil war-ravaged West African country of Sierra Leone, Bergner (God of the Rodeo) demonstrates a deft dramatic touch. He all too vividly recreates the violent rebel advance on the capital, Freetown, as seen through the eyes of Lamin Jusu Jarka, whose hands were chopped off against the root of a mango tree. It is hard to believe, after reading about the "twenty seconds of localized apocalypse" that a South African mercenary helicopter pilot unleashed on rebel trucks, that Bergner was not himself hovering above the scene. The tragedy is precisely described, but Bergner struggles to discover the motivations of his subjects. Why the Kortenhovens, a white missionary family from Michigan, stay in Sierra Leone for two decades and why Michael Josiah, a government soldier and able student of Western medicine, still believes in healing of the local juju men, are questions that, after intense speculation, remain enigmas. Bergner's biggest struggle, though, is with himself. He often seems to be searching the war-torn country for evidence of his own personal responsibility. When talking to natives who wished for British recolonization, he "all but appealed for racial resentment or historical embitterment." With so many exotic and compelling stories in Sierra Leone to be told, the reader is left wondering why the author has spent so much time telling his own. Despite his thorough research and narrative flair, Bergner falls into the journalistic travelogue's trap-his commentary tells the reader more about the journalist than about the place visited. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Sierra Leone, the West African country established by the British to reward black American slaves who sided with them during the Revolutionary War, is now wracked by its own civil war. Although picturesque and rich in natural resources, including diamonds, Sierra Leone has also been the setting of devastating atrocities--child soldiers enlisted in the fighting, hacking off of limbs of noncombatants, rampant drug and sexual abuse. Bergner offers a close-up view of this war-ravaged nation through the perspective of a wide range of individuals, black and white, European and African. Among those Bergner highlights: a white American missionary, formerly an idealist; a mercenary pilot with a heart; a father who loses his arm while attempting to rescue his daughter from rape; a western-trained doctor who perceives himself as bullet-proof while he treats AIDS patients; a military commander who takes an involuntary young bride with him as he plunders the countryside. This is a compelling book that puts human faces on a conflict that has burst into international headlines. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"[Bergner] has undertaken a huge, ghastly task, and his book is so beautifully written that you will not pull away from it...Bergner describes what is magical and what is malign in Africa as well as anyone ever has." --The Los Angeles Times

"An eloquent witness...[Bergner has] a journalist's eye for the telling moment." --The New Yorker

"The strength of [Bergner's] spare and evocative account is his gallery of characters, whose stories weave through the book and at times intersect with one another...A reminder of the potential [for killing and healing] that we all carry within us." --Adam Hochschild, The New York Times Book Review

"Astonishing, unsettling...A remarkable book, full of piercing images and brilliantly observed details."--Chicago Tribune

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the Land of Magic Soldiers tells the stories of a group of native Sierra Leoneans: a father who rescues his daughter from rape, loses his hands as punishment, and then begins to rebuild his life; a child soldier (and sometime cannibal) and the priest who tries to help him; and a highly Westernized medical student with an immunity to bullets and a cure for HIV. Interwoven with their stories are those of the would-be saviors: a family of American missionaries who make their home in a tiny village as the war overruns them; a mercenary helicopter gunship pilot who thrives on the fighting he tries to end; and the army of Great Britain, committed to intensive intervention in a country that is so anarchic and desperate that, forty years after independence, its people long to be recolonized.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

What is of value in this book is less what it says about Sierra Leone than about the human condition. — Adam Hochschild

The New Yorker

The black and the white of Bergner’s title are, on the one hand, the victims of the seemingly endless civil war in Sierra Leone and, on the other, the missionaries, aid workers, and British soldiers who arrive to restore hope. Bergner follows such bleak narratives as that of Lamin, a husband and father whose hands were chopped off by the rebels, and Komba, a child soldier who calmly describes eating a victim’s heart. While an eloquent witness, Bergner has little to offer in the way of sophisticated political explanation. He does, however, have a journalist’s eye for the telling moment; in one scene, amputees, coming to the polls to vote, pose happily for the cameras, while a member of the CNN crew says casually that the segment probably won’t air in America.

Publishers Weekly

In this compilation of stories from the civil war-ravaged West African country of Sierra Leone, Bergner (God of the Rodeo) demonstrates a deft dramatic touch. He all too vividly recreates the violent rebel advance on the capital, Freetown, as seen through the eyes of Lamin Jusu Jarka, whose hands were chopped off against the root of a mango tree. It is hard to believe, after reading about the "twenty seconds of localized apocalypse" that a South African mercenary helicopter pilot unleashed on rebel trucks, that Bergner was not himself hovering above the scene. The tragedy is precisely described, but Bergner struggles to discover the motivations of his subjects. Why the Kortenhovens, a white missionary family from Michigan, stay in Sierra Leone for two decades and why Michael Josiah, a government soldier and able student of Western medicine, still believes in healing of the local juju men, are questions that, after intense speculation, remain enigmas. Bergner's biggest struggle, though, is with himself. He often seems to be searching the war-torn country for evidence of his own personal responsibility. When talking to natives who wished for British recolonization, he "all but appealed for racial resentment or historical embitterment." With so many exotic and compelling stories in Sierra Leone to be told, the reader is left wondering why the author has spent so much time telling his own. Despite his thorough research and narrative flair, Bergner falls into the journalistic travelogue's trap-his commentary tells the reader more about the journalist than about the place visited. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Bergner is a talented freelance writer who has artfully captured the horror and anarchy of the civil war that ravaged Sierra Leone through the 1990s. His time there coincided with the British military intervention in early 2000 and extended to the reelection of President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah in 2002. Through the lives of selected individuals — a resourceful double-amputee, a South African mercenary, a child soldier, a missionary family, a Freetown medical student — Bergner fashions a disturbing portrait of the "moral garbage dump" that is war-torn Sierra Leone and offers an unusually candid side commentary on his own emotional reactions to what he has seen and heard. As a study of Western neoimperial intervention in the non-Western world, his account also provides a sharp contrast to the current situation in Iraq.

Kirkus Reviews