Trafficked

March 19, 2012
In this timely and fiercely honest debut novel, paced like a thriller, Purcell confronts the economic and sexual brutality inherent in the practice of human trafficking. After a terrorist bombing kills 17-year-old Hannah's parents (and police implicate her father), Hannah and her babushka (grandmother) teeter on the precipice of economic peril in Eastern Europe's impoverished Moldova. Just after Hannah leaves school, postponing her dreams of becoming a doctor, a charming agent named Olga offers her job in the United States. Despite widespread anxiety about the export of girls as sex products, this seems the only viable option for Hannah. After Hannah makes a harrowing journey across Russia and assumes a false identity, her dream job quickly becomes a nightmare. Housed in a typical L.A. home, she functions as a nanny (and house slave) for an indulgent but lascivious man and his monstrous, vindictive wife who won't allow her to leave the house and fails to pay her. The novel's intelligent, feisty heroine and strongly sketched supporting cast prove a powerful lens into this shocking issue and its psychological costs. Ages 12âup. Agent: Kate Lee, ICM.

January 1, 2012
Before her parents died in a terrorist bombing, Hannah was an ordinary Moldovan teen, dreaming of becoming a doctor. Now she sells carrot salad in the market and watches her future recede while her peers plan for college. Offered a way out--false documents and a high-paying job as a nanny in California--Hannah accepts. Her terrifying journey nets her unpaid slavery as nanny and housekeeper in a house she's forbidden to leave. Her room is a windowless garage without privacy; her letters home are stolen. Smart yet naive, crushed yet resilient, nearly but not entirely powerless, Hannah grows attached to the children. But their mother abuses Hannah, and their father and his predatory associate stalk her. She finds some consolation watching the boy next door; he's her age, but they live in utterly different worlds. Hannah's world, in which men have the power and freedom to treat her body as their property, where any small kindness is expected to be returned in sexual currency, is chillingly credible and unflinchingly revealed. Halfway through this debut, a distracting, melodramatic subplot featuring complicated political intrigue is introduced, but Hannah herself, compelling and believable, keeps readers focused on her plight and that of other de facto slaves worldwide. After this, readers won't find them so easy to ignore: One could be the nanny next door. (author's note) (Fiction. 12 & up)

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February 1, 2012

Gr 9 Up-Many reluctant readers won't be able to put down this riveting novel. Hannah, 17, grew up in Moldova seeing "You Are Not a Product" posters warning her about the trafficking of human beings. Nonetheless she still wants to try and make it to America to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor and sending back money to her grandmother, her only living relative. Using false documents and the instructions of an unsavory agent, Hannah makes her way through United States immigration only to end up in a fresh hell that gets worse as the months go on. The garage, not the guest room, is where the Russian family who "ordered" her makes her sleep. And sleep is in short supply after days full of cleaning and caring for the Platonovs' children. Sergey, who looks at Hannah with hungry eyes, promises his wife that he is going legit and trying to leave behind the Russian American crime world, but his boss runs many illegal ventures, including making money off poor trafficked girls, and Hannah fears what awaits her if she fails to appease them all. With no pay or life beyond working, she is a slave, anonymous and disposable. The characters ring true and as the plot reaches a crisis point, readers will be drawn in by the suspense of Hannah's captivity.-Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2012
Grades 9-12 It's an irresistible proposal: 17-year-old Hannah will be given a fake Russian passport and transported from Moldova to Los Angeles, where she will make $400 a week as a nanny while taking English classes at night. But things in L.A. are quite different than she expected. The wealthy couple she works for, Sergey and Lillian, make her clean day and night and sleep in a sweltering garage, forbid her to go outside, and refuse to pay. Worse, the cruel Lillian is convinced that Sergey is trying to seduce Hannah. Trapped and alone with no language skills, Hannah's only bright spot is taking the trash out each night, where she hopes she'll get a glimpse of the friendly looking neighbor boy. Purcell's well-researched look into human trafficking has the slow pull of a dawning nightmare, and the simplest of eventssay, a dinner partyare soaked with almost unbearable tension. Sergey and Lillian are not entirely good or evil, which puts readers in the same confused, helpless state as Hannah. Gritty, realistic, and eye-opening.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)