A Walk Across The Sun: A Novel [Paperback]

Story Description:

Corban Addison leads readers on a chilling, eye-opening journey into Mumbai's seedy underworld--and the nightmare of two orphaned girls swept into the international sex trade.

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.

My Review:

This was a difficult book to read for me because it dealt with the horrible but very real world of exploitation in its worst form; the rape of young girls and women. This despicable act isn't just relegated to the farest reaches of our planet but happens every single day in our own backyards.

A Walk Across the Sun is the story of two sisters who lose their family to a tsunami and then are kidnapped in broad daylight and sold into the sex slave industry. The eldest of the two sisters, Ahalya who is seventeen, suffers unspeakable acts to her physical, emotional, and spiritual self. Her younger sister, Sita, age fifteen doesn't fare much better when she is sold many times in the course of two and a half months to perform physical labour that is gruelling to say the least.

Thomas Clarke, one of the main characters, is powerless in his search for Sita. Having been a lawyer with a large firm in the United States, he goes to Bombay, India for a year at CASE which is dedicated to the prosecution of these scumbags that buy these girls.

Corban Addison has written a novel that has something for everyone. It is part thriller, part suspense, part mystery and filled with a poetic beauty fit for the most discerning. It is a novel of sex, rape, love, hate, hope, wisdom, forgiveness, and redemption.

Between India, Paris, and the United States you are about to be taken on a journey with two of the most lovable girls you'll ever have the pleasure to meet in fiction and ones you'll never forget even after the last page has been turned. I can promise you that once you've begun this novel, you won't be able to put it down!

I was enraged at the blaring disregard for women and I had many tear-stained pages throughout my reading of this novel. I was thankful for Mr. Addison's notes at the end of the novel on how to help stop human trafficking and is a must read! This novel has moved me into action and I highly recommend everyone read it. This would be a great book selection for book clubs. It needs to be discussed and kept on the front burner and in the forefront of everyone's mind. We all need to pitch in and help.

An awesome read for sure. Taking us across the globe educating us on the different walks of life and the dangers that lurk out there where our young girls/daughters/friends/sisters are concerned.
Couldn't put the book down and have since shared this book with so many friends and family.

The sexual exploitation of children is one of the many tragedies of globalization. 'A Walk Across the Sun,' explores the movement of children from developing world countries like India to United States where they can become slaves to the perverse desires of the despicable pedophile. Sita and Ahalya have barely survived the deadly tsunami on December 26, of 2004 that's hit their village on the western coast of India. Numbed by the death of their mother and father and grandmother, they leave their destroyed house of a nun from the school they attend. Displaced and wretched, they become easy fodder for kidnappers looking to sell them as slaves. At the same time, Thomas Clarke is an attorney living in Washington D.C. who has recently lost a child to crib death. Stopping at a park for a walk and contemplation, he witnesses the kidnapping of a little girl from her mother. Coinciding with the recent death of his daughter, he experiences an emotional bond with the mother of the abducted little girl. When he is blamed for a botched law suit at his firm, Thomas uses the firm's offer of a leave to join a non-profit group in India dedicated to stopping the use of underage prostitutes in the Mumbai. This gives him the opportunity to do something he believes in and provides an opportunity to mend his marriage to an India woman who has returned to her home of the same city. The book follows the terrible travails of Sita and Ahalya and the desperate attempts of Thomas Clarke to save them and his marriage at the same time. It's a riveting read that provides insight into a human tragedy.