Very Brief Synopsis
The book details the lives of two sisters who are the only survivors in their family of a tsunami that sweeps the Indian coastal town where they lived. Ahalya is 17 and Sita is 15. Alone and unworldly, they accept help getting to their boarding school convent from a man who knew their father and who unknowingly leaves them in the hands of an unscrupulous taxi driver who sells them into human slavery. On the other side of the world, a burned-out lawyer, Thomas Clarke, has discovered that his marriage to his Indian wife is finished and so is his career, possibly. He takes a sabbatical in India with an NGO that prosecutes human traffickers and tries to help the survivors and revive his marriage. The trek takes us from Bombay/Mumbai to Paris, to New York City to Atlanta and back. (Human trafficking is, after all, universal.) The book is filled with realistic detail, and as the author's epilogue tells us, the research has been prodigious - but it never becomes gruesome in detail.
N.Y. Times - Nicholas Kristof's "Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods"
I have not stopped thinking or reading about the book since I finished it. This morning (3/18/12) in The New York Times, in the Sunday Review section, Nicholas D. Kristof had an article called: "Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods." You should read it. But, in case you don't, be aware that according to Kristof, web sites like Backpage.com "...help find buyers for enslaved young girls." According to Kristoff, Backpage.com accounts "...for 70% of prostitution advertising among five web sites..." that carry such ads, "...earning more than $22 million annually." And guess who owns Backpage.com? Village Voice Media. And attorneys general from 48 states have written a letter to them asking them to "get out of the flesh trade." There is an online petition with 94,000 signatures at www.change.org which you can sign asking Village Voice Media to stop taking prostitution ads. According to Kristof's article, the lawyer for Village Voice media, Liz McDougall, stated that "it is 'shortsighted, ill-informed and counterproductive' to focus on Backpage when many other Web sites are also involved..." Craigslist has already stopped taking such ads in 2010. Advertisers deserted Rush Limbaugh in droves for his despicable and demeaning remarks about women. Perhaps advertisers should feel the same about anyone making millions off the backs of enslaved women.
Other Resources
If you are concerned about young women all over the world who are not voluntarily offering their bodies, who are kidnapped, drugged, beaten, and emotionally and physically enslaved on a daily basis, you can also check out these sites suggested by Addison:www.polarisproject.org
www.sharedhope.org
thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com
Books the author mentioned in his epilogue are: A Crime So Monstrous, The Natashas, Disposable People, Desire, Demand and the Commerce of Sex. Films: At the End of Slavery, and Born into Brothels.
Realistically, as long as there are willing buyers, there will always be a market for captives of unscrupulous, heinous men and women who sell innocent women and young girls into sex slavery. But we can try to make a difference!
I hope you will give the problem some thought and lend your name to petitions and perhaps give of your time and or money to some of the organizations in the trenches. Write to Village Voice media. www.villagevoicemedia.com
Read A Walk Across the Sun. www.amazon.com
We can be better global citizens.
