Sold is the story of a 13 year old girl named Lakshmi from a small village in the hills of Nepal. She and her family is very poor, but Lakshmi is loved, and she is happy until one day when her fathers gambles and "sells" her to a woman from the city. She and her mother think that she is going to work as a maid for a rich family in the city. That is not what happens. She is taken far away to India and is forced to become a prostitute.
I would recommend this book to mature teenage bibliophiles over 14 years of age both for its poetic prose, and the complex emotional world that McCormick creates, and I would also recommend this book to reluctant readers who will fly through the novel with its large margins and its easy on the eyes bright white quality paper. This book is for teens interested in world affairs, women's issues, poverty or world cultures. Emigrants from Southeast Asia may also enjoy reading this book that so vividly describes the beautiful terrain, fascinating climate and harsh realities of the poor of Nepal and India. In particular, this novel has the ability to communicate not just poverty the way Americans view it, but poverty where there is no infrastructure, no education, and no way out.
The book written from Lakshmi perspective focuses on the relationships between the women forced to work in the brothel. Sold asks the questions: "How long should you hold on to hope?" "How do you know who to trust when you have been betrayed so often?" "What makes life worth living?" Etc. Sold also does its best to answer these questions. More broadly it answers the question: "How does the sex trade continue, and why is it so hard to combat?"
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Yup. Some painful stuff here. Books like this always debunk the tool that librarians can decide where to place a book in the library based on the age of the character. In the sense that kids usually like to read up, I don't think I could honestly place Sold in the hands of an 11 or 12 year old.
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