If You Can’t Use Child Prostitution to Sell Books, What Good Is It?
Surprising though it may sound, there are some levels of depravity to which even we won’t sink. Fortunately, PR agencies like Smith Publicity are happy to do the job for us.
Did you know that more than 300,000 children are bought and sold across international borders each year? Or that some 2.5 million children are sexually exploited for money? Or that a pimp can earn more than $200K per year off a single child?
Neither did we, until we got a press release from Smith Publicity. It’s serious stuff we’d never dream of mocking. So, naturally, we assumed they were using these sobering statistics to illustrate the horrible problem of child trafficking, maybe offering an expert to speak on how to keep kids safe.
But no. The stats where there to flog a thriller novel titled “The Pillage and the Plunder,” pseudonymously written by one ‘Sean A’Hearn.’
In his new book The Power and the Plunder, Sean A’Hearn takes us on the journey of two young girls who escape from a sex slave camp deep in the Congo. Filled with twists and turns, A’Hearn hits close to home while taking readers on a thrilling ride.
It’s fun for the whole family! (except, of course, those family members who’ve been abducted and sold into slavery).
It gets better. The book jacket features a blurb by author Caroline Leavitt, who describes the book as “panoramic and passionate… a pleasure to read.” Here’s an excerpt:
… the most feared of all jungle inhabitants were the ‘proud green’…the ransacking soldiers of the powerful militia ‘generals’ who were in constant warfare against each other. They burned villages, captured the boys and young men, raped the women then hacked them down as they clutched their crying babies. They left them mortally wounded and dying beside their butchered fathers. And seldom did they bother to take the effort to put them out of their misery. They could not get caught by the ‘proud green’. “You must go on.” “I can’t.” “I’m not leaving you behind…you’ll die.” Jenny felt too weak to argue. In a steady flow, her blood seeped out of her and down her inner thighs.The pain from the torn tissues inside her billowed and ebbed, robbing her of strength. She felt too exhausted to keep going.
Yes, there’s nothing we like better than curling up with a big bowl of popcorn and an uplifting tale of abduction, terror, rape, and bodies hacked and mangled. Kind of like Jungle Book, only without the dancing monkeys.
There are probably worse novels (though not too many, judging by that writing sample) on even more exploitative topics. But, please, don’t try to sell it as a morally uplifting educational tale. We’re not buying it — or the book, for that matter.
Note: We also got a kick out of the online radio host who referred to the book as “The Power and the Plunger” (a harrowing tale of plumbers who force kidnapped children to fish lost keys out of waste-befouled public toilets). A far less shitty concept, we think.
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