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A review by niaforrester
Anybody's Daughter by Pamela Samuels-Young, Pamela Samuels Young
4.0
Anybody's Daughter, the winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Fiction is not the kind of book you look forward to reading. Even if you're a fan of suspense novels (which I generally speaking am not), the themes are difficult ones, the plot challenging. And that's just from reading the synopsis. But I decided to dive in anyway, because of the accolades it received. I'm glad I did. I thought I knew about child sex trafficking, having worked on the issue in my other non-writing life. But this book, through the author's clever placement of fact and detail managed to educate me a great deal more than I otherwise would have been. The plot centers around the harrowing several-days-long ordeal of a young girl and her family after she is lured away from her life and home by the promise of what she believes will be a new romance with a handsome young man she met on Facebook. In fact, she is being trapped and will be forced into a life of what is essentially sex slavery. But this is not just any young girl, this is the niece of Dre Thomas, an ex-con determined to use his knowledge of the code of the streets to get her back.
Pamela Samuels Young managed to keep the sense of urgency alive throughout the entire book, as Dre races against time to locate his niece, and along the way learns about a trade much more diabolical than the drug trade that resulted in his incarceration. Along with Dre, his former flame, an attorney, Angela Evans, navigate the seedy underworld of child sex trafficking and encounter the varied characters who populate it, from Loretha, once herself a trafficker and prostitute, now reformed, to The Shepherd, the sociopath who makes millions peddling the flesh of young girls.
What I liked most about the plotting of this book is that the author managed to preserve the grit and realism without giving us squeamishly uncomfortable details. If, like me, you might have avoided this book entirely because of the difficult subject matter, be assured that Pamela Samuels Young managed it as sensitively as was possible.
Characterization
The hero of this book is, undoubtedly, Dre Thomas, the man with the checkered past who is so determined to retrieve his kidnapped niece that he will stop at nothing, and I mean nothing. Kind of. Though there is the ever-present implication that Dre would kill to get his niece Brianna back, the author manages again to toe the line, making Dre do things that are questionable without morally compromising him. Though he wants to get Brianna back and will, in the heat of the moment, stop at nothing to accomplish that, in retrospect, Dre's basic nature as a "good man who's done some wrong" is preserved. He is strong, principled, loyal and determined. All of that comes through loud in clear both in his actions and dialogue. I was left wanting to know and read more about him, and even before completing this book, was browsing others by this author that would tell me more of Dre Thomas' story.
Less of a solid presence--though that may have been intentional--was Angela Evans, Dre's love interest and the lawyer who will do her best to help him bring his niece home. While Dre is exacting a little street justice, Angela is educating herself about the mainstream justice system's failings when dealing with victims of trafficking. As an attorney representing trafficked girls, she thought she knew some of what they faced, but it is through Dre's ordeal that she learns her most important lessons. I found Angela a sympathetic character and a likable one, but was not particularly attached to her. My assumption was that this was a result of it not being 'her book'. Pamela Samuels Young has others in which she is the main protagonist, so I was not troubled by the more superficial characterization of Angela. I am sure that occurs elsewhere.
The other stand-out character in the book was Brianna herself. The girl who is ripped from her family and thrown into a world she never imagined existed could well have come across as generic, or just, well, "anybody's daughter". But Pamela Samuels Young conveyed well Brianna's spirit, determination and will to escape her circumstances. And though they had few scenes together (and only at the end of the novel), she also managed to convey the closeness of the relationship between Dre and his niece in her firm belief that no matter what, her uncle would be coming to get her.
Evocative Appeal
Three words: child. sex. trafficking. If that doesn't evoke emotion, then you're dead. Apart from a sense of dismay at the extent of the scourge of this trade, Anybody's Daughter also managed to keep me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. Almost every chapter ended with a sense of urgency to get to the next one, so that I felt, like Dre, that I was racing against time. The pace was effective, the brevity of the chapters added to the sense of things moving quickly, and showed the author's understanding of structure as well as content and how that can enhance a reading experience.
Worth a Re-read
The first read of Anybody's Daughter is likely to similar to watching a horror film through your fingers. You want to see what happens next, but are terrified to experience the full effect. I think the second read will be worth it, if only to pick up on more nuance of characters and details about a poorly-understood crime. I would go so far as to say that this book is educational and so, worth many reads.
The Bottom Line:
Anybody's Daughter is well worth the read. Books that entertain, convey information you might not otherwise have learned, and make you think about and see the world differently are always a good thing. Most books manage only to do one of those things at a time. This one does all three. I recommend it. It will make a great book club read because the plot alone is rich with issues that I can see a group of readers spending long hours debating and discussing.