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Hybrid: Second Floor Reads NonFiction Book Discussion

The Great Escape by Sacket Soni

Join us for our non-fiction book discussion group. This month’s title is The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America by Sacket Soni.

In late 2006, Saket Soni, a twenty-eight-year-old Indian-born community organizer, received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker in Mississippi. He was one of five hundred men trapped in squalid Gulf Coast “man camps,” surrounded by barbed wire, watched by guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Recruiters had promised them good jobs and green cards. The men had scraped up $20,000 each for this “opportunity” to rebuild hurricane-wrecked oil rigs, leaving their families in impossible debt. During a series of clandestine meetings, Soni and the workers devised a bold plan. In The Great Escape, Soni traces the workers’ extraordinary escape, their march on foot to Washington, DC, and their twenty-three-day hunger strike to bring attention to their cause. Along the way, ICE agents try to deport the men, company officials work to discredit them, and politicians avert their eyes. But none of this shakes the workers’ determination to win their dignity and keep their promises to their families. Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of twenty-first-century forced labor, Soni takes us into the lives of the immigrant workers the United States increasingly relies on to rebuild after climate disasters. The Great Escape is the gripping story of one of the largest human trafficking cases in modern American history—and the workers’ heroic journey for justice.

Reserve a copy of the book while registering (we'll let you know when it's ready to be picked up), or come to the Central Library Reference Desk.

Questions? Email discussion leader Susan Gibberman at sgibberman@stdl.org.

You can choose to attend this program in-person or watch online on Zoom. Please indicate your preference when registering. After registering, you will receive a link to the Zoom webinar at least three hours in advance of the program.

Want to switch your attendance preference from online to in-person (or vice versa)? No problem! Just give us a call at (847) 923-3347 and we'll take care of that for you.

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