Garden of Dreams / Melissa Siebert

To my absolute frustration I have been struggling to write a review on this beautiful novel for almost three weeks now. As a mother of three young children, the subject of child trafficking makes my claws come out. When our son was two and a half years old, we came spine-chillingly close to the horrifying world of child trafficking. You never think it will come close to your own home, but reading this book made my mind whirl with what could have happened.

In spite of the harrowing subject matter, Melissa Siebert succeeds in telling the touching coming of age story of a young Capetonian teenage boy – Eli de Villiers with sensitivity and grace. He falls into the wrong hands when his mother recklessly leaves him to make his way from the desert city of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India, to Kathmandu, in Nepal where his biological father lives and works as a political mediator.

In a country where prostitution is legal and child trafficking is an alarmingly normal part of everyday life, the exotic blonde teenager is kidnapped and becomes the obsession of the nauseating child trafficker Auntie Lakshmi, a madam and the reigning queen of the red light district in Delhi. She seems to slither through life, suffocating and killing the soul of everything and everyone she comes into contact with.

A wonderfully cinematic chase ensues when a few of the children, including Eli, escape from the brothel in GB street and start their harrowing journey back home to the countryside in Nepal. Eli takes the lead in this journey of discovery, where at certain moments we experience India as tourists, sometimes as a parent scared for a child’s safety and at other times as one of the few legitimate law enforcement officers trying to fight the scourge of human trafficking that poisons the land.

This story is filled with colourful characters, experiences and emotions. The momentary reunification of the families is short lived and the cycle of abduction stands ready to start again just after the last page – a brutal reality in the lives of many children worldwide. Melissa has told this story and created awareness of this trade in the most beautiful and sensitive way possible. A must read!