Monday, October 3, 2011

Sold by Patricia McCormick


Lakshmi has spent all of her thirteen years in her small village in the mountains of Nepal, working hard and trying to make the best of things despite her thoughtless, gambling step-father. But when the family loses what little they have in a monsoon, her stepfather’s solution is to sell Lakshmi into prostitution. Thinking she is going to the city to work as a maid, Lakshmi ends up captive in a brothel in Calcutta, told she must earn her way free.

Told in captivatingly sparse free-verse, Lakshmi’s story unfolds in a series of powerful vignettes. Through Lakshmi the reader meets a cast of richly detailed supporting characters, who create a vivid world where Lakshmi’s struggle for freedom and justice comes to life.

Sold is a very intense look at the realities of child sex trafficking. While McCormick deals very sensitively and honestly with an incredibly difficult and brutal topic, teachers and librarians may still want to recommend this book to mature readers. -- Regan Schwartz


McCormick, Patricia. Sold. New York: Hyperion, 2006.

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