Books: Tough Subjects and Teens

Patricia McCormick is not the kind of writer who sits at her keyboard waiting for inspiration. She's the kind of writer who finagles her way into a Kathmandu jail to interview a young Nepali man awaiting trial. He told McCormick without a hint of embarrassment that he had sold his fiancé. Why? "Because I wanted a motorcycle," he replied. He then laughed with his jailers, knowing he would probably get off.

And she journeyed with a group rescuing prostitutes to a tiny Nepali village, where mothers were warned that the adolescent daughters they thought they were sending to jobs in the city were actually being sold into the sex trade. In many cases, it transpired, a family member--a brother, a father or an uncle--had made the sale.

So who does McCormick write for? Kids. The research on the teen sex trade was for her new young-adult novel, Sold (Hyperion Books for Children; 263 pages). A journalist by training, she's an avid researcher, but her books are not dry. Sold is told in poetic vignettes in the voice of Lakshmi, a 13-year-old girl who lives in rural Nepal. Life is grueling there for women young and old. "A girl is like a goat," a local saying goes. "Good as long as she gives you milk and butter. But not worth crying over when it's time to make a stew." Her stepfather sells her for 800 rupees to a woman who spirits her off to a brothel in Calcutta. If the book sounds grim, it is. It's also the stuff awards committees love; Sold was just nominated for a Young People's National Book Award.

Hyperion recommends the book for readers 12 years old and up, but its language makes it accessible to younger children. McCormick, who has two grown children, is adamant that young readers will benefit from knowing the truth about this pernicious practice. "If you're 12, I think you'll understand what's happening," says the author. "But I don't think it will hit you the same way if you're too young for the book." While the book is blunt, it is never sensational: "Men come. They crush my bones with their weight. They split me open," says Lakshmi. And it is less about sex than about coercion and commerce and the eventual triumph of will. At heart, McCormick admits, she is an activist. "I couldn't write this book fast enough," she says, "because I felt such urgency to have the situation understood."

Sold is not McCormick's first foray into controversial material. Her much lauded debut novel, Cut, which sold nearly 400,000 copies, is the first-person story of Callie, a girl who has been institutionalized for cutting herself. Not everyone likes McCormick's gritty approach. Some librarians have declined to buy Cut, fearing copycat behavior.

McCormick's talent lies in rendering stark facts vividly but not melodramatically. Just as Sold's brothel, Happiness House, smells of "spices and cooking oil, perfume and cigarette smoke," her novel has several scents, some lovely, some harsh. Having had success with self-mutilation and prostitution, she's taking on a less physical anguish in her next novel. It's about a 15-year-old girl whose brother is killed in Iraq. Awards committees, take note.