New York: Hyperion, (2011). Hardcover first edition - As a child Agnes Kamara-Umunna and her family fled Liberia in advance of the army of child soldiers led by Charles Turner. After years of exile, with the fighting seemingly over, she returned to Liberia, a country devastated by years of civil war with families torn apart and villages destroyed. She accepted a job at UN-run radio station and, as a 43-year-old single mother of four, she headed out to the ghettos of Monrovia and befriended these former child soldiers. One by one, as they spoke on her program, 'Straight from the Heart,' it seemed like reconciliation and forgiveness might be possible. This book is not only Agnes's memoir: it is also a testimony to a nation's descent into the horrors of civil war and its subsequent rise out of the ashes. x, 302 pp. ISBN: 978-1401323578.