SOLD - Softcover

McCormick, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786851724 ISBN 13: 9780786851720

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2008

Synopsis

The powerful, poignant, bestselling National Book Award finalist gives voice to a young girl robbed of her childhood yet determined to find the strength to triumph.

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though 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 by the co-author of I Am Malala (Young Readers Edition), this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.
 

About this title

About the Author

Patricia McCormick, a 2006 finalist for the National Book Award, is the author of four critically acclaimed novels - Purple Heart, a suspenseful psychological novel that explores the killing of a 10-year-old boy in Iraq; Sold, a deeply moving account of sexual trafficking; My Brother's Keeper, a realistic view of teenage substance abuse and Cut, an intimate portrait of one girl's struggle with self-injury.
 
McCormick was named a New York Foundation on the Arts fellow in 2004. She is also the winner of the 2009 German Peace Prize for Youth Literature.
 
She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and lives Manhattan. 

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786851724
• ISBN 13: 9780786851720
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 263