A harrowing story about Nadira, a Pakistani teenager who is considered damaged goods, having paid for a crime that her older brother never committed, leaving her with a scarred face and abused young body. When her little brother is sold by her ruthlessly greedy uncle to work as a camel jockey for rich sheiks, Nadira disguises herself as a boy, gets herself sold into the desert, and enters an unimaginably brutal life of child exploitation. She survives – and helps the other young boys survive – by telling stories, à la Scheherazade, determined she will find her young brother and somehow return them both to safety and freedom.
Review: “In Celebration of Asian Pacific American Month: New & Notable Books,” The Bloomsbury Review, May/June 2007
Readers: Young Adult
Published: 2007
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