LITTLE FAMILY

We meet Beah's protagonists as an unnamed narrator glimpses a boy in a Zimbabwean forest before the boy slips away. The child has heard an elaborate whistle and answered it, the all-clear of four adolescents and one small girl surviving by their wits. Elimane, Khoudiemata, Ndevui, Kpindi, and Namsa have come together to shelter in the remains of a crashed airplane covered with foliage. But these are no boxcar children—each day they fan out to scam and steal their daily portion with a zest that Dickens’ Fagin would admire. They sneer at government workers along the road: “The census meant nothing. It was just another ploy that let those in power pretend that something was being done.” It’s an ingenious setup from the author of A Long Way Gone (2007), a memoir of Beah's harrowing coming-of-age in Sierra Leone as a child soldier. That book created a sensation—though some questioned its accuracy, Beah stands by his story—and his fiction is clearly informed by both his experiences with trauma and as a Los Angeles–based married father of three. When his characters become entangled with a crime syndicate midbook, their deeds grow graver, and the children blot out their fear with ganja and alcohol: “They were upset about not only what they had taken part in, but what it stirred up for them as well.” As the rainy season resumes, their old plane leaks more each year. Khoudiemata, perhaps the cleverest in the little family, starts a beach flirtation with a clique of rich young elites, who declare she is “fresh, original, real, and mysteriously unusual in a great way.” The awkwardness of that phrase conveys the belabored writing that occasionally detracts from the story. Still, readers will be drawn to discover what befalls a group fending for itself amid conflict and crime.

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