HARPERCOLLINS/William Morrow – @HarperCollins @WmMorrowBks
[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]
AUTHOR: Talia Carner
ISBN: 978-0-06-289688-9; paperback; 5.31 in x 8.00 in (September 3, 2019)
432pp, B&W, $16.99 U.S., $21.00 CAN
The Third Daughter is a 2019 historical novel from author Talia Carner (Jerusalem Maiden). The novel illuminates a little-known piece of history – the sex trafficking of teen girls and young women kidnapped from Russia and sent to South America in the late 19th century. The Third Daughter recounts this story via the fictional story of a fourteen-year-old year Jewish girl whose family is sold a fairy tale, the first of many lies that enslaves a girl into prostitution.
The Third Daughter opens in Russia, 1889. Fourteen-year-old Batya and her family: her father, Koppel; her mother, Zelda; and her youngest sister, Surale, have been exiled from their home in the Russian village of Komarinoe. As Jews, Batya and her family have just suffered the latest round in the centuries-old Russian pogroms, and this one has found Batya and her family thrown from their home and land. Batya is the third daughter of four, and as the elder daughter still living at home, she is determined to do everything she can to help her family. At the same time, she prays to God for a miracle, perhaps a wealthy man who will come and take her away from all her suffering.
Fate brings a wealthy man who arrives by carriage to rescue Batya and her family from the hard traveling of the road. This apparently, worldly, wealthy stranger is Yitzik Moskowitz, called “Reb” Moskowitz, by the Russian Jews who know him. Reb makes a generous financial offer to Koppel for a chance to marry Batya, and her father leaps at the opportunity to give his third daughter to a man who can guarantee her an easy life and passage to America, as Reb claims he can do.
Batya feels like a princess in a fairy tale as she leaves her old, impoverished life behind. But that all soon turns into a waking nightmare. Her new “husband” does indeed take her to America – South America! Batya is kidnapped to Buenos Aires, Argentina, a vibrant, colorful, growing city... where prostitution is not only legal, but is also deeply embedded in the culture of the city.
Reb Moskowitz turns out to be a pimp, an influential pimp in an organization of pimps known as “Zwi Migdal.” And Batya is one of the thousands of girls and young women from Eastern Europe who are tricked and sold to the brothels of Buenos Aires. Over the next five years, Batya takes on the identity of an alluring older woman named “Esperanza,” and uses her body to bring sexual pleasure to hundreds of men. When an opportunity to bring down Zwi Migdal arises, however, Batya takes it, but will saving herself mean abandoning her family that is still suffering the antisemitism of Russia?
THE LOWDOWN: I was totally unaware of that little-known piece of history that chronicles the sex trafficking of young women from Russia to South America from the late 19th century and into the 20th century. It turns out that the modern scourge of sex trafficking is not something new. Girls and women have been trafficked into sex slavery long before the Internet made it easier and more wide spread and perhaps, more underground.
I began reading The Third Daughter during the high heat of the summer, and this historical novel is a true summer potboiler. It is as much a thriller and perhaps, as much a horror novel as it is a historical novel filled with the details of Jewish religious life. Author Talia Carner's historical detail and evocative prose will force many readers to tear through the book, always trying to find out what happens next. Will Batya finally find a man to rescue her? Or will she finally end up getting killed by her madam or pimp... if they find out that she is involved in a conspiracy against them?
Carner's vivid prose brings late 19th century Buenos Aires to life, but her best writing is in her character work on Batya. Carner makes her readers feel what Batya feels – the highs and lows, the sorrow and the despair, the fear and the bravery, and ultimately, the determination. By the end of The Third Daughter, Carner will make sure that you don't want to leave Batya. The third daughter is the heroine and inspiration of this heartbreaking, wonderful, and redemptive novel, The Third Daughter.
I READS YOU RECOMMENDS: Readers interested in historical fiction, especially related to Jewish history, will want to read author Talia Carner's novel, The Third Daughter.
8 out 10
This book contains the following:
An “Acknowledgments”
A glossary of Yiddish, Hebrew, Latin, Polish, Russian, and Russian terms
“Meet Talia Carner”
“Buenos Aires, 1996,” which details the 1994 bombing of “Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina” building
“The Historical Background of The Third Daughter”
“Ezrat Nashim Poster”
a “Reading Group Guide”
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
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