Following the publication of her “Read with Jenna” pick, BRIGHT BURNING THINGS, Lisa Harding celebrates the American release of her debut novel, CLOUD GIRLS, which was first published as HARVESTING in Ireland in 2017. Chronicling the lives of two young girls sold into sex trafficking, this startling, unforgettable book with a ripped-from-the-headlines premise educates as much as it shocks and horrifies.

In Moldova, 12-year-old Nicoleta, known as “Nico” to her friends and family, is the top student at her school, praised for her creative writing and talent for languages. As she and her best friend, Maria, play and discuss their changing bodies, Nico watches as her older brothers and her father demonstrate the cruel ways of men --- drinking at the bars, making poor business deals, and overlooking her and her mother completely.

"Harding makes a brilliant decision here to illustrate not just the international sex trafficking trade, but the domestic one as well... Bold, unforgettable and galvanizing, CLOUD GIRLS is a difficult yet urgent and important read."

Until one day, when Nico awakens to blood darkening her sheets. Although her mother tries to hide this development from her father, it is not long before he brings home Petre, a glamorous man whom he claims not only will marry Nico, but will give her the kinds of opportunities that he and her mother cannot: seeing the ocean for the first time, continuing her education in England, and becoming the wife and one day mother to a rich, successful man. But even Nico can see that this is a transaction like any other: cash exchanged for goods and services…her goods and services.

Meanwhile, in Dublin, teenage Sammy is cracking under the weight of her dysfunctional family. Her mother has succumbed to full-blown alcoholism; she is sweet and caring while also being horrifically abusive. Her distant father tells her that it can’t be all that bad even as he continues to hand her mother money before leaving for work each day, fully knowing that it will be spent at the liquor store nearby.

When Sammy’s mother crosses a line one evening, Sammy hatches a desperate, volatile plan to injure herself so severely that her best friend, Lucy, will feel obligated to take her in and get her out of this nightmarish house. Lucy’s father is a doctor, and while he seems to warm to Sammy, Lucy’s mother believes her to be the “bad sort” and urges Lucy to reconsider their friendship. Left with no other options, Sammy takes up a room in a hostel. She is no stranger to sex and feels certain that she can support herself if need be; after all, she’s not like the girls on the news. She’s choosing this herself, and she’s smart enough, strong enough and brave enough to weather whatever comes next. Right?

When Petre takes Nico away, she meets his “wife,” Magda, a beautiful woman not much older than her. As the van they are traveling in continues to pick up teenage girls, Nico’s nightmares of an older husband only worsen. It soon becomes clear that Magda is there to make these young ladies open to trust, despite the eerie, ominous tone of their situation. And even though she and Petre claim to be married and in love, their relationship is a one-sided power dynamic. Nico does not know the term for it yet, but she has just entered the sex trafficking industry, just one of the 1.2 million children trafficked internationally each year.

Across Europe and the North Sea, Sammy is dangling on the precipice of joining the industry herself, even though she is in her home country, on her own terms, and has family and a home in the very same town. The story is familiar, and the details are shocking, but it is everything that lingers outside of the acts of sexual violence that will truly horrify you. Because the truth, as Lisa Harding expertly demonstrates and proves, is that trafficking is occurring at all hours, in all towns and cities, and to children everywhere. And more people know about it than you think.

Harding writes in an author’s note that she worked with the Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People campaign run by The Body Shop, ECPAT International and the Children’s Rights Alliance in Ireland. The stories she read as part of her work not only devastated her but informed her writing of CLOUD GIRLS. Nico and Sammy are amalgamations of everything she learned.

Harding makes a brilliant decision here to illustrate not just the international sex trafficking trade, but the domestic one as well, providing a snappy reply to naysayers who would “Not in my country” the topic away if given the chance. Although she is never gratuitous in her descriptions and depictions of what happens to Nico, Sammy and other girls like them, she shines a vivid, unflinching light on the horrors of this flourishing, lucrative world, as well as the ways in which it is kept hidden (almost too easily) under the facade of normalcy that is so much more palatable to the masses.

Bold, unforgettable and galvanizing, CLOUD GIRLS is a difficult yet urgent and important read. While explosive cases like the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell exposé have introduced people worldwide to the reality of the sex trafficking industry, this book instead puts the focus on the victims: girls, daughters, sisters, friends and humans full of spirit, potential and an awe-inspiring hope that someone, somewhere will care enough to look for them.