Eleven-year-old Sally Horner disappeared from Camden, New Jersey, in the summer of 1948. At the time, Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov had been working on the story of a middle-aged man, who was a pedophile, and his abusive relationship with a young girl. When Sally was reunited with her family, having been kidnapped and held captive by a rapist for close to two years, the sensational news inspired Nabokov, giving him the impetus to complete his novel, LOLITA.

Brilliant, graphic and disturbing, LOLITA is an oft-misunderstood novel, one where the innocent victim at its center, Dolores Haze, is too easily overlooked or misread. That there was a real-life model for Nabokov’s tale is fascinating and yet has been academically unclear. In her highly readable nonfiction examination of the connections between Nabokov’s masterpiece and Sally Horner’s abduction, Sarah Weinman seeks to remind us of the girls, real and fictional, who suffer at the hands of monsters.

"A well-researched tale, THE REAL LOLITA is compelling and powerful. It draws on the best aspects of true crime and literary criticism to create something riveting and revelatory."

THE REAL LOLITA centers on Sally’s story, but Nabokov’s circles around hers. Sally was a fifth-grade honor student who, succumbing to peer pressure one day after school, stole a notebook from a neighborhood store. It was March 1948. A gray-haired man in a fedora took her by the arm, identified himself as an FBI agent, and told her that, although he would let her go that day, she would have to report to him in the future. Months went by without seeing the man, who went by the name Frank La Salle. But when she did, in June of that year, he had concocted an elaborate scheme to steal her away from her mother and sister.

For the next 21 months, the pair traveled together, posing as father and daughter, until Sally finally escaped in San Jose, California. To those who came across them, they seemed like a loving duo, but behind closed doors, Sally’s life was torment. Her eventual rescue and the subsequent trial of La Salle was national news, and at the time many couldn’t understand why she had stayed with him as he had offered her certain freedoms. Many also blamed her for her role in the relationship, despite the fact that she was only a child. When Sally met with tragedy just two years after her ordeal ended, her name and her story seemed to fade from memory. Even her family avoided speaking about her.

Nabokov denied drawing on the Horner/La Salle story, even though there are clear parallels between them and his characters of Dolores Haze and Humbert Humbert. However, his protestations are hard to accept when the names of these real-life figures even appear in LOLITA, and the details of their story are found in the notecards he used to organize his writing for the novel. Weinman traces the aspects that the two stories, one all too real and one fictional, share. In doing so, she gives voice to Sally, forgotten for so long, and reveals intriguing features of LOLITA, Nabokov’s process, and the path to publishing this seminal work of literature.

A well-researched tale, THE REAL LOLITA is compelling and powerful. It draws on the best aspects of true crime and literary criticism to create something riveting and revelatory. Weinman’s narrative is compassionate and informative, and I strongly recommend it.