Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. 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. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid working for a wealthy woman in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi undertakes the long journey to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope. But she soon learns that she has been sold into prostitution. An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt – then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave. The reason I chose to read the book "Sold", is because it has a lot to do with my marketplace of ideas project and that is human trafficking. Through my project I learned what these girls go through who are trafficked for sexual exploitation. Just like Lakshmi, these women are promised jobs in other countries and are fooled into leaving home and becoming trapped in the world of prostitution.
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