A Walk Across the Sun
Addison’s debut is an international thriller about the shadowy world of child trafficking. During the 2005 tsunami, sheltered Indian teenagers Ahalya and Sita are orphaned and fall through the cracks into the criminal underworld. As they struggle to comprehend their situation, attorney Thomas Clarke, halfway across the globe, faces a personal and professional crisis that sends him off to India to work as a lawyer for an international agency focused on sex trafficking. When a brothel raid nets Ahalya but not her sister, Thomas sets off on a personal quest to find the missing teenager. The slowish start is made up for with plenty of action and travel in the second half of the story, as Thomas closes in on Sita, and the traffickers do their best to keep her hidden. Clarke’s quest requires more than a little suspension of disbelief, but it offers an insightful take on the all-too-real problems of international human trafficking. --Jessica Moyer