Sold

Sold, by Patricia McCormick, is a novel about a thirteen-year-old Nepali girl named Lakshmi living with her family in poverty on a mountain side in Nepal. Lakshmi lives a difficult life with her family where she ends up doing most of the work around the farm because her stepfather has a lame arm which keeps him from working, and their family is in desperate need of a new roof for the winter. Since he can’t work, Lakshmi’s stepfather spends his days in the tea shop gambling away the money that Lakshmi and her mother work hard to make for their family. Even though Lakshmi is frustrated by her stepfather’s  irresponsibility, she and her mother both know that, in their culture, it is better to have a man around who gambles than not to have a man in the family at all. Other than the extra work Lakshmi does around the house, her life is very similar to that of a young teenager in Nepal at the time.