(When you understand that a human being can be bought for as little as three hundred dollars, you look at your Ipod in a whole new way.)” AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY It asks questions of you in a way that headlines and soundbites don't.

Fiction…is in my view, one of the best ways to mobilize people. McCormick hoped the novel would inspire its young readers to take action themselves.Īs McCormick wrote in Amnesty International's online newsletter in 2006, “I want the book to make activists out of those who read it. Getting past the darkness, she eventually completed the text of Sold, which was widely acclaimed when it was published. While the trip gave her the information McCormick needed for the book, the experience and the girls' often wretched lives left her depressed, full of despair, and unable to write for weeks. As McCormick relayed in her novel, even if the girls somehow get out of the brothel, they are nearly always rejected by their families, if they can find them again. She learned of the horrible abuse they suffered, how they were kicked out of brothels when too sick to work, and the plight of children born there. The author then spent about a month in Nepal and India researching the book, talking with girls who had been forced to work as prostitutes. McCormick was inspired to write Sold after meeting a young photographer who had been working undercover to document young girls working in Indian brothels. Written in a series of almost poetic vignettes, Sold relays the confusion and immediacy of Lakshmi's situation and of her ultimate decision to allow herself to be rescued. Focusing on the life of Lakshmi, a young girl from a mountain village in Nepal who is sold into prostitution in India, the book is a powerful statement about the sex trade and one girl's ability to survive desperate circumstances. Sold (2006) is Patricia McCormick's third novel for young adult readers and the winner of a 2007 Quill Award.

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