Response: Sold by Patricia McCormick

Wow. This book is pretty heavy. The first few pages left me wondering if a proper story could be told with a few short journal entries and a couple lines of poetry. My skepticism was quickly put to rest. From the beginning, young Lakshmi's life is filled with challenges  The simple necessities like food, shelter, and even water elude Lashkmi and millions like her. What I found interesting was that her religion had aspects of Islam and traditional Himalayan beliefs. Her faith plays a prominent role in her line of thinking and I wonder if this does more harm than good. Her Islamic faith dictates that she shouldn't even be in the same room as a man. Would she have resisted and been beaten, starved, druged, and raped if her religion didn't have such strong taboos? For a while she blamed herself and then started blaming the people responsible like Mumtaz and the customers. However, I don't believe Lashkmi ever blamed her father even though he was the one that sold her and put all of this into motion. Lashkmi sill feels a sense of duty to her family which i don't know if I admire or pity. It's all but impossible to begin to fathom the best way to survive such atrocities  Readers should ask themselves how the would react but understand that there is not way of knowing without first hand experience.  I read a few reviews of Sold online and the consensus is generally positive. Nonetheless, a few reviews claim the book is simplistic and only deals with one problem/conflict. I saw issues of poverty, women's rights, police corruption, healthcare, and international assistance. Any one of these issues is worthy of a story and I am dismayed that anyone could downplay such a tragic tale.