Dime

Huddled on a cold street corner after a fight with her foster mother, thirteen-year-old Dime meets L.A., an older girl who offers her food, comfort, and a home with her and her boyfriend, “Daddy.” Good-looking and manipulative, Daddy seduces Dime with new clothes, compliments, and the promise of a place in his “family.” Maintaining her place comes at a price, and soon Dime is earning her keep turning tricks. When Daddy’s dreams of a bigger hustle result in a new recruit, an eleven-year-old girl called Lollipop whom Dime is assigned to “school,” Dime worries that this responsibility will cement her position in a family she is now eager to leave. Told primarily retrospectively, the novel begins with a short prologue that laments, “There is so much that needs to be said.” It then moves from “six weeks ago” to “last winter” (when Dime first meets L.A. and Daddy), and from there to the present. Dime’s first-person narrative is also interspersed with excerpts of a note she is drafting in her head to explain and justify what she considers her betrayal of the people closest to her. All of these shifts can be a lot for a reader to track; however, the suspense is resolved (somewhat abruptly) in the novel’s final chapter. Pair this with McCormick’s Sold (rev. 9/06) and Leavitt’s My Book of Life by Angel (rev. 11/12) for an eye-opening exploration of the all-too-real horrors of sex trafficking. Resources are appended. amy pattee

Huddled on a cold street corner after fighting with her foster mother, thirteen-year-old Dime meets an older girl who offers her a home with her and her boyfriend, "Daddy." But maintaining her place in Daddy's "family" exacts a price: soon Dime is earning her keep turning tricks. Dime's first-person narrative offers an eye-opening exploration of the all-too-real horrors of sex trafficking. Resources appended.