THUNDER BAY – A local elementary school teacher hopes her new book will bring child soldier issues to life.
Donna White’s new book, Bullets, Blood and Stones, is based on true stories obtained through interviews with former child soldiers from Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army from her trip to Uganda eight years ago.
“I was in Uganda several year, I met these former child soldiers and after talking to them and hearing their stories…there was one story in particular, Charlie’s story, and I said I have to write this,” White said.
The book is based in Uganda where Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army were abducting children and forcing them to be child solders.
The story focuses on two teenage boys from Canada who find themselves in Uganda befriending a young boy, Charlie, who has just escaped from the army.
“The book is an emotional roller coaster,” White said. “There’s going to be highs and lows, tears and anger, but throughout the whole book there’s this whole essence of hope.”
White added that there’s a whole idea that life does continue on and you don’t have to stop having faith in humanity because goodness does win over all.
“I think too many times people focus on the negative side of things and we see so much bad news in the world, but good things to happen.”
Listening to Charlie’s story made White come to this realization because he was able to forgive someone who forced him to kill his own mother and “that’s a level of goodness you need to celebrate.”
White said no matter how much she prepared herself to hear the stories there were always some that brought her emotional pain.
“When you are interviewing people you can’t even continue the interview sometimes because you just need to sob,” White said.
“With a lot of those stories even if I heard them I couldn’t mention them in the book because they were too horrific.”
With this book White wanted to take people out of their comfort zone and show them the reality of the situation with child soldiers.
“I wanted to burst a lot of bubbles, but I wanted to also show them that all is not lost and humanity is good in its inner core.”
White hosted her book signing the day before Red Hand Day, which is a day set aside to draw attention to the plight of child soldiers around the world.
