Saturday, May 26, 2018

Trafficked, by Kim Purcell


Promised an opportunity to earn money and go to school in the United States, Hannah is lured from Moldova to Los Angeles to work for a Russian emigre family.  There, the family she is working for enslaves her and makes her work inhumane hours.

But that is only part of the story.  As she is figuring out that she has been tricked, she also finds out that her “host” family knows a tremendous amount of detail about her and her family.  It is as if she has been targeted and the fact that she was solicited by and that ended up with this particular family is not nearly as random as it at first seemed.

Nightmarish in the conditions it describes, this is a suspenseful page turner.  There are a few factual inaccuracies (Purcell really struggles with Russian names), but the details about human trafficking and how it works resonated with the true stories in the news.  It’s a terribly unpleasant story and one that is hard to call enjoyable, but it is compelling.  That said, this is an all-action story, with little interest in character development.  The host family are basically evil and an attempt to create a romance with the boy next door is largely a wasted subplot.

No comments: