But America does not turn out to be the land of milk and honey after all. And Hannah does not find herself rolling in dough. Instead, after a torturous journey, Hannah is virtually imprisoned in a house where she is forced to work long hours, enduring frequent verbal and physical abuse, for no pay. Hannah is told that she must work off the cost of her travel before she will receive any wages; it could be years before she makes any money at all. Not that she would be allowed to leave the house to spend it.

Hannah is caught up in a serious predicament with nobody to turn to for help. She is isolated in the house, not allowed to use the phone, and the family for whom she works refuses to mail the letters she writes to her family. Without money, the proper documents, or the ability to speak much English, Hannah has nowhere to go. Further, the family threatens to have her family and friends back home hurt if she tries to escape.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Hannah keeps hoping that if she just does her job well enough and long enough, the situation will improve. But what if it never gets any better after all?

Kim Purcell’s debut Trafficked is a bleak, but eye-opening book. Written in third person, Trafficked has a relatively matter-of-fact, straightforward style; there’s not a lot of fluff or adornment, which is fitting for the book’s emotional content. One should not begin this novel expecting any harsh realities to get sugarcoated or tied up neatly. While there is some hope to be had, the majority of the book is, in all honesty, a bit soul-crushing. And I mean that in the best way possible. I would expect no less from a book based on true stories about human trafficking. Trafficked has joined Want to go Private? and Room on the list of books about social issues that made me physically ill while reading.

It is utterly horrifying to think that this kind of modern-day slavery is going on underneath our noses all the time. If you think human trafficking is a thing of the past, or that it is restricted to any one cultural group, Trafficked will wake you up. Once you have been exposed to the real plight of trafficked teens and kids, it is hard to ignore. Trafficked is a book that makes you want to do something. Purcell’s book is at times graphic, intense, and emotionally charged. Though it is by no means easy to stomach, it is the perfect book for teens and adults interested in social awareness and injustice.

Kim Purcell is donating 20% of her earnings from Trafficked to help kids and teens. She has also compiled a list of some of the ways you can help here.

Summary from Goodreads:

Life-saving letters from a glittering wishlist of top authors.

If you received a letter from your older self, what do you think it would say? What do you wish it would say?

That the boy you were crushing on in History turns out to be gay too, and that you become boyfriends in college? That the bully who is making your life miserable will one day become so insignificant that you won’t remember his name until he shows up at your book signing?

In this anthology, sixty-three award-winning authors such as Michael Cunningham, Amy Bloom, Jacqueline Woodson, Gregory Maguire, David Levithan, and Armistead Maupin make imaginative journeys into their pasts, telling their younger selves what they would have liked to know then about their lives as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgendered people. Through stories, in pictures, with bracing honesty, these are words of love and understanding, reasons to hold on for the better future ahead. They will tell you things about your favorite authors that you never knew before. And they will tell you about yourself.

Details:

The Letter Q edited by Sarah Moon and James Lecesne will be released by Arthur A. Levine Books on May 1, 2012.

As you may have gathered if you followed my blog in December, I really enjoy letters from people to their younger selves. This anthology includes LGBT-focused letters, but I’m sure their contents will be just as relevant to anyone struggling with the development of their identity. Plus, I’m excited about any anthology that includes David Levithan.

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

If You Like… is a feature highlighting blogger recommendations for books, authors, TV shows, movies, and music based on the things you already know and love. This week’s post includes recommendations for stories featuring magical realism.

If you like magical realism, you might like…

Books

Recommended by Kari @ A Good Addiction:

• Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma: This is always my first rec when it comes to magical realism… it so perfectly keeps things very real except for that one thing, that sense that something is not quite right. This book is also just stunning and amazing and one of my all time faves.
• Fracture by Megan Miranda: Just a hint of something supernatural, in an otherwise realistic and a little scientific setting, and so amazingly well done. Not to mention, I adore Decker. He’s one of my fave boys.
• If I Stay by Gayle Foreman: I always debate if this one is contemporary or supernatural… which makes it the perfect example for magical realism. Out of body experience? Yep.
• A Need so Beautiful by Suzanne Young: This one might be pushing the boundaries, but it’s one of my favorite books ever so I am using it. Not really an angel book, and certainly something that is very contemp and realistic… other than, you know, the whole turning gold thing.

Recommended by Jamie @ The Perpetual Page-Turner:

• Love In The Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I LOVE him. When I think of magical realism, this is who I think of. He’s the definition of overly verbose, but if you don’t mind pages of descriptions where nothing happens for a while…you will probably dig him. I know I LOVED both books of his I’ve read.

Recommended by Jennifer @ YA Book Nerd:

• Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares: Four best friends magically share the same pants which they believe will give them luck during the first summer they spend apart
• Just Add Magic by Cindy Callaghan: Three best friends discover an old cookbook that might cast magical spells.
• Wish Alex Bullen: A girl makes a wish to have her dead twin sister come back to life and a dress appears on her doorstep, granting her wish.

Recommended by Jessica @ I Read to Relax:

• Savvy and Scumble by Ingrid Law
• The Leland Sisters Book 1 and Book 2 by Marissa Doyle
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
• Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
• Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Movies/TV Shows

Recommended by Jennifer @ YA Book Nerd:

• Freaky Friday: Mother and daughter switch bodies and must learn to understand each other better before they can switch back.
• 13 Going on 30: A 13 year old wishes to be thirty, flirty, and thriving to escape the angst of teen life
• Liar Liar: A lawyer must spend a whole day not lying after his son makes a birthday wish. Starring Jim Carey.

Recommended by Jessica @ I Read to Relax:

• Simply Irresistible
• Big
• Pleasantville
• Groundhog Day
• Big Fish
• The Lake House
• Penelope

Jolene joined the military at 18. She had nothing. Her parents were dead, not that they’d ever really been there for her anyway. In her high school to flight school program, Jo found family and purpose for the first time in her life.

Later, Jo married a successful criminal defense attorney and had two daughters, Betsy and Lulu. She found herself with a real family and a career she loved. But nothing could have prepared her for the sacrifice of leaving her family behind to defend her country.

Jo’s anti-war husband, Michael, was never supportive of her career, but his lack of understanding only drove the couple apart. As Jo leaves for Iraq, she and her husband are barely speaking. Her pre-teen daughter is confused and angry. Her four-year-old can’t understand why her mommy won’t be around for her birthday or the first day of kindergarten.

But Jo believes in honor and duty. No matter how difficult it may be to leave, not sure if she can trust her husband to pick up the pieces while she’s gone, Jo made a promise to serve and she will not break it.

Jo tries to paint a safe and happy picture of her life at war to protect her family from the truth. The truth is that she is attacked at camp several times a day. That helicopters are being fired at more and more often. That much of her job is devoted to flying the injured and dead around. And that the people who make it home from war will never be the same.

On the home front, Michael is representing a war vet who is facing murder charges for killing his wife, and simultaneously struggling to be a father to his kids in a way he never was when he had a wife to fall back on. Serving double duty as dad and lawyer is not easy, but it is made all the more difficult not knowing if he will ever be able to repair his relationship with Jo.

As in Night Road, Hannah is an expert storyteller who beautifully depicts a family struggling to come together and heal in the darkest of times. Home Front is made up of rich, complex characters who are at times heroic, and at others downright despicable; characters who love each other to the moon and back, but push each other away when they need each other most.

Kristin Hannah’s newest novel is an absolute sobfest. It is an inspiring, heartbreaking, fast-paced, intense emotional experience. Beneath the serene, idyllic cover is a story that will shake you up and make you rethink what is worth fighting for and at what cost. While Home Front touches on the politics of the Iraq War, it is not about the war itself so much as the individual lives impacted by it–the families forced to live temporarily, or sometimes permanently, without a loved one.

Home Front feels both timely in its exploration of recent events, and timeless in its depictions of hope, forgiveness, family relationships, and the price of freedom.

Home Front is also available as an audiobook from Macmillan Audio. Click on the cover below to listen to the first chapter.

The following video features Kristin Hannah speaking with Teresa Burgess, a pilot and mother who served as an advisor for the novel.

What you should know about Drowning Instinct before reading it: Almost nothing. Drowning Instinct is a book that reveals its secrets slowly. You know how rollercoasters you ride in the dark are always scarier than the ones where you can see the twists and turns up ahead? Drowning Instinct is a rollercoaster ride best taken in the dark. So I’m not going to tell you much about the plot. If you’re one of those people that feels the need to know those sorts of details ahead of time, there are plenty of others who will be happy to share them, I’m sure.

Here is what I will tell you about Drowning Instinct: It is BRILLIANT.

Drowning Instinct explores the ways in which people suffer silently, drowning on the inside, while looking perfectly fine to an outsider. Like the characters in Drowning Instinct, this book has a lot going on beneath the surface. Bick takes some big, bold risks, and they pay off. With a multitude of subplots woven together by conversational (and perhaps unreliable) narration, I never quite knew where the story was going, how it would find its way full circle, or how much I could believe. Bick kept me on edge from beginning to end. This is a one-sitting read; I could not put it down. To put it bluntly, Drowning Instinct is a total mindfuck.

You should not read Drowning Instinct if you are not comfortable floating within gray areas. The characters are not clearly good or evil, predator or prey. They are flawed and they are vulnerable, but ultimately they are only trying to do what is right for themselves. Ambiguity is abundant and it makes the novel simultaneously frustrating and thrilling. Outside of Dexter, I have never rooted so hard for something that felt so wrong. Drowning Instinct will call your morals into question. It is thought-provoking in the best kind of way: It grabbed hold of me and would not let go. Bick’s latest novel begs to be discussed.

With little interest in any of her former activities, Rose fills her time trying to take care of her alcoholic father and her mom’s old garden, but struggles to maintain relationships with her friends and boyfriend. Everything Rose does is a painful reminder that her mom can’t be there to share in her experiences. Yet, each piece in the Survival Kit brings Rose back to Will, a shy, reserved hockey player who had worked in her family’s gardens for years, and who experienced a tragic loss of his own. The Survival Kit didn’t include anything about romance, but maybe Will is the missing piece Rose needs to put her life back together.

Donna Freitas’ The Survival Kit is a beautiful book about grieving and letting go that is sure to make you shed a few tears. The book is full of realistic and likable characters, like Rose’s supportive best friend Krupa and tough love Grandma Madison, as well as a complex father and brother who are grieving alongside Rose.

The Survival Kit is multi-layered. Though Rose has trouble listening to music without her mom, her story is enhanced by chapter titles that make up a playlist for her year. Further, the many references to the items in Rose’s Survival Kit beg the question: What would you put in Survival Kits for your own friends and family?

Freitas’ latest work is well worth reading, despite (or perhaps because of) the emotional toll it takes. Bearing many similarities to Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour, The Survival Kit is cathartic, romantic, and well-crafted.