But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the familys crops, Lakshmis stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. Her family is desperately poor, but her life is full of simple pleasures, like raising her black-and-white speckled goat, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp.
and surely not to be missed.Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. The result is both horrific and hopeful, terrifying and triumphant. She writes with a haunting immediacy – in this case, using the sparest prose poetry – that underscores Lakshmi’s desperate situation, as if the brevity of the sparsely powerful chapters is all that the young girl can reveal in between trying to stay alive. Patricia McCormick, who was a 2006 National Book Award finalist for Young People’s Literature for Sold, is certainly no stranger to difficult issues young people face, having tackled self-mutilation in Cut and drug addiction in My Brother’s Keeper. In spite of the violence and abuse she suffers every day, Lakshmi manages to form life-saving bonds with her fellow slaves… and together, they dare dream of another life. She arrives to a shocking, harrowing new life, sold to a brothel as a sex slave, burdened with fabricated huge debts that she can never ever repay. Lakshmi’s stepfather decides she must leave the family, and somehow support the family.įor the promise of 800 rupees and a job as a maid, Lakshmi follows a “lovely city woman” down the mountain with hopes of saving her family. But then the monsoons arrive, leaving behind only destruction and deprivation.
Although her family is extremely poor, 13-year-old Lakshmi’s young life in a mountainous village in Nepal is not without moments of great joy and comfort.
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