This spring I took a nostalgic retreat back to my tattered Anne books. It was a happy place. Yet after finishing the sixth Anne book and finding myself wishing more and more each day that I lived in the quirky utopia of L.M. Montgomery's Prince Edward Island, I knew that it was time to move on. One cannot live in fictional utopia forever...
I've always been a person of extremes, so it should be no surprise that I left P.E.I for Nepal. My next book took me to a poor mountain village at the foot of the Himalayas where a girl was about to be unwittingly sold into the sex trade. (I didn't really intend to make such a drastic leap out of innocence, it just happened to be the next book on my reading list that the library had readily available for download.)
The book I downloaded was Patricia McCormick's Sold. It started rather slowly, depicting the imperfect, yet simple life of a young Nepali girl. The main character, Lakshmi, lives with her mother, her pet goat, and her stepfather who spends most of his time gambling away the family's money. She is about 12 years old when her stepfather tells her that she is going to become a maid in "the city." This is bittersweet news for Lakshmi. She knows that will indeed miss her home, but she's also excited to begin aiding her family and sending home money to help her mother live comfortably.
As the book's title suggests Lakshmi never does become a maid in the city. She is one of the thousands of girls transported across the border into India where she is forced to work as a prostitute. Stripped of her innocence and everything she knows, Lakshmi must work night by night to pay off her "debt" to the brothel's owner. Her debt grows with each meal she eats, each dose of medicine she is given, each customer that turns her aside for another girl. Yet even here the the darkest of places she finds solace in camaraderie with her "sisters" in the brothel and their children who daytime hours. Even in this harrowing existence, the options of escaping seem more dangerous. The city outside the walls of the brothel seem dangerous and threatening. Rumors circulate about gangsters who are hired to hunt down escaped girls. The girls are also told to distrust white men who come with their business cards offering a safe-house, a way out. But is it one such business card that offers Lakshmi freedom. If she is courageous enough to accept the offer...
There is light in this book. There is a glimmer of hope. Mind you, it's harder to see than in an Anne-book, but there is goodness in McCormick's world. The book alludes to salvation for the women caught in slavery. However, they cannot be forced to leave the brothel. Some even prefer it there. It is this fact, this light in a dark place that makes the book worthwhile. McCormick's story was fictional, but her research for the book was very real. She went to India and talked to girls who had lived Lakshmi's story. This book is important because two things are true: 1) women are sold into the sex trade every day, most often against their will and 2) there are non-profit agencies out there to help them escape. One such agency that is International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM works with women to not only free them from the sex trade, but to rehabilitate them and teach them practical skills to make a living. Yet IJM and others cannot do this work without funding. It is not often that a book influences me to evaluate my level of charitable giving, yet I realized upon closing this book that I was truly blessed to grow up in this country, go to college, marry a good man, and hold a job that provides a surplus. When so many women are using their bodies to pay off an ever-growing "debt" I must ask myself - how can I use my surplus to help settle their accounts?
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