Leonor: The Story of a Lost Childhood
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley January 29, 2024
Author Paula Delgado-Kling
Distributor: Amazon
ISBN: 978-1682194478
Publisher: OR Books
Release Date: January 2024
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Leonor: The story of a Lost Childhood is a brutal, factual and honest account of life in Columbia from both sides of the political and economic divide, written over many years by Paula Delgado–Kling as she recounts both her and former child soldier Leonor’s story.
Born into a family of wealth and politics, Delgado-Kling grew up spending weekends with her beloved Grandmother Helena in La Sabana, on the banks for the Bogota River. Her life was one of childish wonder, privilege and freedom.
Leonor grew up in a small farming hamlet in southern Columbia, in a family of far too many children, domestic violence, poverty and hard, gruelling work. She joined FARC – the People’s Army – as a child of eleven or twelve years old, for what she believed would be a far better, richer life.
Escaping the reality of the FARC, a damaged, drug addicted seventeen-year-old, she struggled to build a new life in the ‘demobilisation centres’ established by the Columbian Government. Over more than 20 years, she slowly rebuilt a life that was different to the brutality of life in the Military Camps.
In an overheard conversation about Columbia, an opinion was stated that Columbia was a failed State and the women were the silent victims, saw Delgado-Kling return to Bogota in 2001 to meet Leonor; and so the story of obsession, brutality, bestiality, survival, drugs and war mongering unfolds through the eyes of a child, a teenager and then a mother of two daughters.
Leonor: The Story of a Lost Childhood is contrasting, tragic, painting the life of many who grow up in poverty in countries where the is little or no equality, where guerrilla groups can gain a hold through drugs, terror and manipulation, where central Governments are weak and corrupt.
It is a story of survival, struggle to regain a life that has meaning, but overall one of sharp contrast that two women from vastly differing backgrounds, but for the chance of their birth, could easily have lived either life during those early years in Columbia.
Cathartic for Delgado-Kling and in many ways healing for Leonor, this is a story of hope for a better future, even if is only achieved one small step at a time.
The Notes at the end of the book are well worth reading, as if you only had a passing knowledge of the tragedy that is Columbia, they are well worth accessing.