Sold by Patricia McCormick

It is easy to forget how good we have it in this country, and it's easy to believe that horrible things don't happen here. I guess that's the ultimate purpose of books like this: to remind us. I picked up Sold for two reasons. First, last year when I went to the NCTE conference this book was on just about every list I saw for Young Adult Lit. Second, Jess read it and said it was good. I can't say that I was looking forward to reading this, I knew what it was about.

Lakshmi is 12, the only daughter of a very poor Nepalese family in a tiny village. Her mother tries her best, but her step-father has a serious gambling problem. After a drought followed by an unusually strong monsoon wipes out the family rice fields, her step-father sells her to a mysterious glamorous stranger who promises to find her a position as a maid.

Being a maid means Lakshmi can help her mother and younger brother by sending her pay home. She goes willingly. She is so naive, in fact, that she doesn't realize anything is wrong until long after she's over the boarder into India. Not in fact, until she's installed in a brothel and the clients are in front of her does she realize what is going on. She's been sold into prostitution.

Mumtaz, the madame, is one of the most chillingly awful people I've ever read in literature.

The story is brutal, which is expected given the subject matter and I question its suitability for the younger end of YA group. Not that I think we should wrap our teens in cotton-fluff and protect them from the realities of the world, but there are sections of this that are graphic, and of course, the whole thing is emotionally disturbing. The verse format of the text softens this some, but also heightens the horror of it.

It was an excellent read, and I'm glad I read it, but I will never reread it.