Sold

In the remote mountains of Nepal, thirteen-year-old Lakshmi’s world is woven from simple joys—hopscotch games with her best friend, her mother’s gentle hands braiding her hair by lamplight. But when devastating monsoons destroy her family’s meager crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather makes a desperate decision. She must leave home to work as a maid in the city, he tells her. A glamorous stranger promises opportunity. Lakshmi journeys to India with hope in her heart, ready to help her family.

What awaits her at “Happiness House” is unspeakable. Lakshmi has been sold into prostitution, trapped in a nightmare controlled by the cunning and cruel Mumtaz, who ensures through deception that the debt can never be repaid. Yet even in this darkness, Lakshmi clings to her mother’s words: Simply to endure is to triumph.

Patricia McCormick’s National Book Award Finalist renders this harrowing reality in spare, luminous vignettes that read like poetry. Through Lakshmi’s voice, we witness not only unimaginable suffering but also the fierce bonds of friendship that form between the girls, the small acts of resistance that preserve dignity, and ultimately, one girl’s courageous decision to risk everything for freedom.

This is a story that will stay with you long after you turn the final page—a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and an urgent reminder that these stories are not fiction for countless girls around the world. Powerful, necessary, and ultimately hopeful, Sold is essential reading for young adults and anyone who believes in the power of survival.

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