A Walk Across The Sun by Corban Addison

When a tsunami rages through their coastal town in India, 17-year-old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister Sita are left orphaned and homeless. With almost everyone they know suddenly erased from the face of the earth, the girls set out for the convent where they attend school. They are abducted almost immediately and sold to a Mumbai brothel owner, beginning a hellish descent into the bowels of the sex trade.

Halfway across the world, Washington, D.C., attorney Thomas Clarke faces his own personal and professional crisis-and makes the fateful decision to pursue a pro bono sabbatical working in India for an NGO that prosecutes the subcontinent’s human traffickers. There, his conscience awakens as he sees firsthand the horrors of the trade in human flesh, and the corrupt judicial system that fosters it. Learning of the fate of Ahalya and Sita, Clarke makes it his personal mission to rescue them, setting the stage for a riveting showdown with an international network of ruthless criminals.

This was a dark look at humanity and such a gloomy book to end my 2013 reading list with. The story basically revolves around the sex trafficking business and the lives of two teens from Mumbai while simultaneously telling the story of Thomas, our protagonist, and his mission to save the girls as well as his diminishing marriage. The author described the sex trade and the awful truths of the business without being too detailed or caustic. That takes a skilled hand! Many reviewers loved the wrapped up ending, but as a reality based reader, I disagreed. Two girls are lost separately in the middle of G-d knows where in an underground trafficking world yet Thomas has connections upon connections which help him in his paramount worldwide search. The book focuses on hope, which is a sentiment to be valued, yet I think the author’s liberties with hope vs. connections was skewed. Don’t let that deter you from reading this book however. It’s an eye-opening realization of this horrific trade that is happening not only abroad, but also very much in our own country.

– “The Judge marked up everything he read. He was an arbiter of fates in his day job. Faceless authors were easy prey.”

– “Healing, she found, required motion, intention, purpose-the reassurance that life was still worth living.”

– “Why do women persist in speaking in riddles?”

“Because love is a riddle,” she replied. “As is life itself.”