Book Review: Sold on a Monday

By Jessica Asbell

How far would you go if you were desperate to eat? Would you go so far as to sell your children? In Sold on a Monday, Kristina McMorris writes about the heartbreaking tragedy of families in the 1930s who sold their children, so they could eat.

Ellis Reed stumbles across two brothers playing in front of a sign that reads, children for sale. Stunned, Ellis takes a picture of them and develops it in the darkroom of the paper where he writes a society column. Lily, the chiefs secretary and wannabe reporter, stumbles across it and takes it to the chief. Suddenly, Ellis is given his big break: a chance to write a story that matters.

But when an accident ruins the original picture, Ellis must go back to take another. However, the family is gone. Desperate for the story and his big break, Ellis pays a mother to take a picture of her children with the sign instead. As the accolades and donations pour in, Ellis is uneasy about just what he sold on that Monday.

When he goes back to give the family money and discovers the children have been sold, Ellis and Lily work together to find out what happened to their mother and where the children have gone. As they discover that all is not as it seems, they race against the clock, risking their jobs, their freedom, and even their lives, in a desperate attempt to put a family back together.

Kristina McMorris paints a bleak picture of life in the 1930s, when mobsters ruled, Prohibition reigned, and families were desperate. Those who had jobs did what they could, however unethical it might be, to keep them. If youre looking for historical fiction based on what people faced in the Great Depression, look no further than Sold on a Monday.

McMorris will be at FoxTale Book Shoppe on November 7 at 6:30pm.