Trafficked

Seventeen-year-old Hannah comes to Los Angeles from Moldova to be a nanny but soon finds she isn't being paid for the long hours she's putting in and isn't allowed out of the house. The final hundred pages pack a wallop as mysteries are revealed and Hannah almost suffers the fate she most fears. An eye-opening debut novel about modern-day slavery in America.

After her parents are killed in a terrorist bombing and her uncle disappears, seventeen-year-old Hannah comes to Los Angeles from Moldova to be a nanny. She plans to take English classes, finish high school, get top grades, and go to medical school. Four hundred dollars a week plus room and board seems like a fortune to Hannah, but this is America, what does she know? Though Hannah's not a complete innocent: she's heard of the trafficking of Moldovan girls, has seen the anti-trafficking poster depicting a woman struggling in a giant hand, with the caption "You are not a product." Hannah's life in Los Angeles with Sergey and Lillian Platonov seems okay at first until she realizes she isn't being paid for the long hours she's putting in, isn't allowed out of the house, and doesn't have time to pursue her dreams in America. Lillian is tyrannical, Sergey makes advances, and there's the threat of Paavo Shevchenko, who runs a dance club and a prostitution ring. It's not easy to write a well-paced novel in which the protagonist is hidden away, never does anything, and only goes outside four times in six months, but the tension of the story resides in the mystery of what exactly is going on. What forces brought Hannah to L.A.? Who are Sergey and Lillian? What is in store for Hannah? The final hundred pages pack a wallop as mysteries are revealed and Hannah almost suffers the fate she most fears. An eye-opening debut novel about modern-day slavery in America. dean schneider