A Walk Across The Sun

The shadowy underworld of global human trafficking in the twenty-first century comes to light in Corban Addison’s 2012 novel, A Walk Across the Sun. After a tsunami decimates their coastal Indian community, sisters Ahalya and Sita Ghai are swept into a modern-day slave trade. In Washington D.C., Thomas Clarke, a high-powered attorney, is facing his own crisis after his family disintegrates. To weather his personal storm, Clarke takes a sabbatical in Mumbai. His path soon intersects with that of the Ghai sisters and his estranged wife, compelling him to remedy the wrongs in their lives as well as his own.

Ahalya, seventeen, and her younger sister Sita, fifteen, awake on December 26 in coastal Tamil Nadu looking forward to a swim in the sea and later, a violin concert with their parents. Their father, a software executive, is prosperous, and the Ghais appreciate Western culture, encouraging their daughters to speak English. Then, hours later, a tsunami strikes. Ahalya and Sita survive, but their waterfront bungalow is gone, and their parents have perished. With nowhere else to go, the girls set out for their convent school but are abducted before they get there.

Their captor sells the sisters to a brothel in Mumbai for 60,000 rupees. The girls are terrified, but Ahalya musters up her courage to protect her younger sister as much as possible from the horrors of their ordeal. She submits to sex with brothel customers, hoping that her cooperation will save Sita from the same humiliation. Prasad, the son of the brothel owner, Suchir, rapes Ahalya night after night. During the day, Ahalya does her best to cheer Sita, singing and telling her stories.



Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., Thomas’s life spirals downward. After the SIDs death of their baby, Thomas and his wife, Priya drift apart on their gulf of sorrow. She leaves him, returning to her family in Mumbai, and he throws himself into work and into the arms of another woman, Tera. Thomas’s father, a respected judge, has always expected his son to become a successful lawyer and one day take a seat on the federal bench. However, Thomas and his group lose a billion-dollar litigation case. By chance, he helplessly witnesses the kidnapping of a young girl in a park. Feeling demoralized, Thomas takes a suggested leave of absence from his firm to work pro bono for CASE, the Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation, located in Mumbai.

The Ghai sisters are separated when Sita is sold to Navin to be a drug mule. He packs heroin into small condom-encased pellets, forces Sita to swallow them, and warns her that she’ll die if any sudden movement causes the pellets to burst. They fly to Paris without discovery, where Sita is enslaved as a manual laborer at a restaurant and cruelly mistreated by its owners, Uncle-Ji and Aunt-Ji.

In Mumbai, a raid on Suchir’s brothel takes place shortly after Thomas joins CASE; Ahalya is rescued. She’s placed in the care of Sister Ruth at the Sisters of Mercy ashram, where Thomas meets with her and promises to search for Sita. As an expression of her trust in him, Ahalya gives Thomas a “rakhi” bracelet. She also plants a blue orchid to symbolize her hope that Sita will be found.



Thomas visits Priya. They married five years ago against her parents’ wishes, and her father’s resentment towards Thomas has hardened. He accuses Thomas of taking Priya from her family and disrespecting her culture. Scorning Thomas’s work with CASE, he refers to Thomas as “yet another Westerner who thinks he can fix all that is broken in India.” Thomas tells Priya about Ahalya’s rescue and the bracelet she shared.

In police custody, Suchir is interrogated and informs on Navin, whom the authorities then apprehend. He confesses Sita is in Paris, so Thomas flies to France. With the help of a woman named Julia, Thomas traces Sita to Uncle-Ji’s restaurant, but it’s too late. She’s been relocated again.

“For Sita, Paris was a dungeon of suffocation and toil,” which now takes the form of servitude at the home of wealthy Russians. She nearly escapes, only to be dragged back by her hair, literally, and then bundled off to the airport. Thomas arrives at the Russian’s mansion just in time to see Sita leaving in a black Mercedes. He discovers their destination is the U.S. and sends Sita’s photo to the FBI.



Priya, meanwhile, softens towards Thomas. She acknowledges that they both made mistakes in their marriage and agrees to take a short seaside holiday with him in Goa. All goes well until Priya reads an incriminating email Tera sends Thomas, who has no lingering feelings for Tera but nevertheless must admit to the affair. Once again, they part ways in anger.

Now in New York, Sita’s nightmare continues as she’s shuttled through an underground criminal network with other sex trade victims. Held captive in small rooms, Sita witnesses the kidnappers raping other girls and narrowly escapes such a fate herself but is forced to pose for pornographic photos. FBI Agent Defoe has been closing in on Dietrich Klein, the ringleader of the largest sex trafficking operation on the east coast. He matches Sita’s photo with one on Klein’s “Kandyland” pornography website and pinpoints Klein’s base in Atlanta, Georgia. With Thomas and a SWAT team on hand, Defoe stages a raid on Kandyland. Both Defoe and Dietrich die, but Sita is rescued.

Thomas sends Priya an email telling her that Sita is safe and that his rescue work clarified his priorities. He and Sita return to India just before the Holi holiday. Sita reunites with Ahalya, who’s pregnant with a baby girl. Thomas and Priya also reunite. He’s finally gained her father’s respect and plans to continue working for CASE. Soon they, too, are expecting a baby girl whom they name Sita.



In a 2011 Publishers Weekly interview, Corban Addison noted, “The U.N. estimates that there are $32 billion in profits from the illicit sex trade every year. […] My hope is that the book will propel people to learn more about the subject […]. Addison’s novel includes an Afterword that identifies sources for more information.