I saw this image on the Internet and thought it perfectly captured the horror of human trafficking through air transportation. I’d love to give credit to the artist who created it.
Following is a letter I received from the founder of She Is Safe (SIS)
A colleague of mine met Susan Egner in her role as an airline flight attendant. Intrigued upon learning that she is also a published author (as she shared an overview of her latest mystery novel), he became convinced that we should become acquainted.
She Is Safe (SIS) is a Christian non-profit organization that I founded in 2002. We work to prevent, rescue, and restore women and girls from suffering abuse and exploitation in high-risk and least-reached places around the globe. This is accomplished by collaborating with local initiatives of education, economic empowerment, anti-trafficking, and advocacy.
Flight into Oblivion immediately impressed me because of its clear focus on the trafficking of women and girls. Sadly, 80% of all transnational victims are females. This book focuses on their plight as they encounter all forms of exploitation and slavery at the hands of those who profit from the trade. This is not simply another mystery novel: As Egner makes clear on her website, her characters face challenges and often undergo personal transformation as they confront issues in contemporary society. Her stories are about ordinary women and girls who are forced to face some of life’s most adverse circumstances. Egner takes readers on a dark journey where we lean forward to see if the paths of these women and girls will lead to individual freedom and personal empowerment.
Flight into Oblivion represents to me a nascent awareness in popular fiction of the scourge of human trafficking we face in the United States and around the world. I join with Susan in the belief that raising the level of awareness among people in all segments of society is important if we are to achieve our common goal of defeating those who would rob others of their dignity and freedom.
And it is brilliant that the title, Flight into Oblivion, tells the story in a nutshell: Girls and women are often transported on commercial airlines through major transportation hubs. We pass them in the terminals; we sit with them—and their captors—on the planes; we see nothing. The book cover depicts a passenger plane vanishing—into oblivion—just as the young girls and women who disappear right before the eyes of those of us who are unaware. This is a compelling mystery that unveils the wretched underbelly of human trafficking, that helps us to see as we’ve never seen before, and that makes us aware of events taking place right before our eyes. We are not likely to see things in the same way again!
Michele M. Rickett
President/Founder
She Is Safe
If you haven’t started the Souls on Board series, please visit our website at www.EgnerINK.com or any of the following sites for these and more books by Susan Egner.
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