Product Description

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. 

He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope.  But she soon learns the unthinkable truth:  she has been sold into prostitution.

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning.  She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family's debt-then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.

Lakshmi's life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape.  Still, she lives by her mother's words-Simply to endure is to triumph-and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world.  Then the day comes when she must make a decision-will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life? 

Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3969 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Released on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up – As this heartbreaking story opens, 13-year-old Lakshmi lives an ordinary life in Nepal, going to school and thinking of the boy she is to marry. Then her gambling-addicted stepfather sells her into prostitution in India. Refusing to be with men, she is beaten and starved until she gives in. Written in free verse, the girls first-person narration is horrifying and difficult to read. In between, men come./They crush my bones with their weight./They split me open./Then they disappear. I hurt./I am torn and bleeding where the men have been. The spare, unadorned text matches the barrenness of Lakshmis new life. She is told that if she works off her familys debt, she can leave, but she soon discovers that this is virtually impossible. When a boy who runs errands for the girls and their clients begins to teach her to read, she feels a bit more alive, remembering what it feels like to be the number one girl in class again. When an American comes to the brothel to rescue girls, Lakshmi finally gets a sense of hope. An authors note confirms what readers fear: thousands of girls, like Lakshmi in this story, are sold into prostitution each year. Part of McCormicks research for this novel involved interviewing women in Nepal and India, and her depth of detail makes the characters believable and their misery palpable. This important book was written in their honor.–Alexa Sandmann, Kent State University, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Lakshmi, 13, knows nothing about the world beyond her village shack in the Himalayas of Nepal, and when her family loses the little it has in a monsoon, she grabs a chance to work as a maid in the city so she can send money back home. What she doesn't know is that her stepfather has sold her into prostitution. She ends up in a brothel far across the border in the slums of Calcutta, locked up, beaten, starved, drugged, raped, "torn and bleeding," until she submits. In beautiful clear prose and free verse that remains true to the child's viewpoint, first-person, present-tense vignettes fill in Lakshmi's story. The brutality and cruelty are ever present ("I have been beaten here, / locked away, / violated a hundred times / and a hundred times more"), but not sensationalized. An unexpected act of kindness is heartbreaking ("I do not know a word / big enough to hold my sadness"). One haunting chapter brings home the truth of "Two Worlds": the workers love watching The Bold and the Beautifulon TV though in the real world, the world they know, a desperate prostitute may be approached to sell her own child. An unforgettable account of sexual slavery as it exists now. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Concise Yet Rich
This book was written for Young Adults but is a great read for any age. The free-verse style is concise yet rich and the author does an excellent job at relating the horrors 13-year-old Lakshmi suffered but in a very tasteful way. The book was well researched and the author interviewed actual child victims of prostitution. It's an easy read but don't let that fool you into thinking it was juvenile. It dealt with a very serious subject in beautifully simple prose.

Fast read...good story
This was a good book, very simple to read, but the story was intense the whole time.

Sold
Sold, by Patricia McCormick, is a riveting tale of a thirteen-year-old, Nepalese girl who is sold into prostitution. It is historical fiction and incorporates many details of the constant trade of women and girls worldwide that is still occurring today.
McCormick herself traveled to India and Nepal to trace the steps that the main character in her novel would take, and was even able to interview women in Calcutta's red-light district who shared their heart-wrenching stories with her. McCormick took away from this experience the idea that these stories needed to be shared because these innocent women and girls were being forced into horrendous situations that they had no control whatsoever over. McCormick lent a voice to these women who had never been able to speak up for themselves, and in the process educated the world on the issue of sex slavery.
While a few of the main themes in this novel are fear, loneliness, and cruelty, McCormick also made a point to highlight the main character's immense hope and perseverance, and the strength and self-discovery that came along with that. Even in the face of ultimate defeat, the main character says, "I will be with them all. Any man, every man... I will do whatever it takes to get out of here." (227) McCormick presented her as an innocent bystander who must find a way to deal with a new, harrowing life and this was incredibly moving. It also helped that the book was extremely well-written.
Therefore, I would definitely recommend this book. The writing style was poetic and never overwhelming, and McCormick crafted an extremely complex and likable character. This book is especially good for teenagers to read because it makes us appreciate what we have and the things that we take for granted every single day. Another reader also commented that "this book will also show you things that are so painful that most of the world likes to pretend that they don't exist" and I also completely agree with that statement.
Overall, Sold was an extremely good, yet harrowing book that opened my eyes to the hardships that other girls my age are facing around the world.