Plot

Somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Komona, a 14-year-old girl, tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12.

Komona, a girl in Sub-Saharan Africa, tells the story to her unborn child about her kidnapping by rebels and forced to join their bloody civil war. When she discovers a valuable intuition about the presence of the enemy, she is elevated as a witch and favored by the rebel leader. However, this special status threatens to be short-lived in this world of superstition and senseless brutality even as the ghosts of the war dead haunt her visions. However, when a newfound friend convinces her to desert, Komona finds escaping that brutal life is far from easy with its physical and spiritual consequences following her wherever she goes.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)

When the Great Tiger Rebels invade her African village, twelve year old Komona, with physical threats against her for non-compliance, is forced to fight for the rebels, her first act of loyalty to them being to shoot her parents dead, with the alternative of her parents dying a much more agonizing death if she doesn't do so. Because she is the only one from her village to survive a skirmish with the government soldiers, the rebels believe Komona is a war witch who can use her magic powers to spot the government soldiers hiding in the forest. As such, she is held in high regard by the rebel leaders, especially the Great Tiger himself. To escape the horrors of her life, she copes largely by taking hallucinogens, which makes her see the ghosts of the dead rather than the red blood that flowed out of their dying bodies. Over time, she befriends another of the child soldiers, a boy nicknamed The Magician. Through that friendship, she sees another avenue for a normal life away from the rebel fighting. But even if Komona is able to escape physically from the rebels, one of the questions is if she will ever really be free especially considering the special status bestowed upon her by the Great Tiger.—Huggo