Publishers Weekly
10/31/2022
In this revelatory debut, Soni, founder of the labor rights nonprofit Resilience Force, recounts the civil rights crusade of 500 workers from India who were recruited to work for Signal International, an American oil rig builder, under the false promise of a green card. In 2006, the workers arrived at the Mississippi “man camp facility,” which consisted of “sardine-can” housing trailers, inedible food, and broken-down bathrooms. The next year, Soni helped hundreds of the workers organize an escape from the camp, only for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to try to deport them. Taking a page from the civil rights movement, Soni and 60 workers marched in protest from Mississippi to Washington, D.C., where they staged a 31-day hunger strike. The workers also filed a class action lawsuit against Signal that concluded in 2015 when a federal jury found Signal guilty of committing labor fraud and trafficking, among other charges. Soni writes with empathy (“Jacob was carrying the burdens of his coworkers, and now I was carrying his”) and conviction (“Our march would be a traveling act of civil disobedience”). This is a searing account of the harrowing road to justice. Agent: David Larabell, CAA. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
An eye-opening look at the world of global itinerant workers who spend years away from home to support their families, The Great Escape is a must-read for anyone organizing a union drive across cultural or racial lines.” —Farah Stockman, The New York Times Book Review
“Beyond the research, this book stands out for its startlingly complex and intimate portraits . . . This book will appeal to students of U.S. immigration and civil-rights history, as well as anyone who loves a beautifully told story."—Library Journal (Starred Review)
“Revelatory . . . Soni writes with empathy and conviction. This is a searing account of the harrowing road to justice.”—Publishers Weekly
“A searing exposé of corporate criminality and its governmental enablers.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Interwoven with the author's own story of visa instability, The Great Escape illuminates the lives affected by human trafficking and the complexity of U.S. immigration bureaucracy.”—Booklist
“It’s paced like a thriller, written like a poem, and full of vivid characters who’d enliven any novel, but it’s the true story one of the largest modern-day trafficking incidents in recent history and how Saket Soni and his crew went after the powerful perpetrators. A story as important as it is riveting to read.”—Rebecca Solnit, author of Orwell’s Roses
“A miracle—immensely moving, powerful, beautiful, and true. It reads like a binge-worthy thriller, told with ridiculous skill and Saket Soni’s gigantic heart pounding audibly on every page.”—Naomi Klein, New York Times bestselling author of On Fire
“I've rarely read a more engrossing tale—and a more powerful reminder that in a strained and stressed world we must embrace human solidarity above all. You will not forget this book, not for a long, long time.”—Bill McKibben, New York Times bestselling author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
“One of this country’s most remarkable activists is also an extraordinary writer. From the very first moment of this world-spanning story Saket Soni has you in his grip. The Great Escape makes you feel astonishment, compassion, anger, and, at the end, something rare these days—hope.”—Adam Hochschild, New York Times bestselling author of King Leopold’s Ghost and Rebel Cinderella
“Saket Soni’s The Great Escape is a revelation: into the underbelly of America’s broken immigration system; into the forces of globalization that move millions of people from the poor to the rich countries without regard for their welfare; into one man's epic struggle to obtain justice for the powerless. The book has the pacing and suspense of the best fiction, but is a true story, told with empathy and humor and wisdom. The Great Escape promises to take its place in the annals of the finest narrative writing about migration.”—Suketu Mehta, author of This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto
“Saket Soni’s The Great Escape is a gripping, devastating, and powerfully written book, a must-read for anyone interested in the real world stakes of migration, corporate corruption, and federal law enforcement.”—Olúf?´mi O. Táíwò, author of Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)
“An urgent book from a master storyteller. Saket hasn't just helped liberate hundreds of trafficked workers—he has also set free an equal number of magical narratives. Right till the end, this extraordinary work is as absorbing as a great novel.”—Amitava Kumar, author of Immigrant, Montana: A Novel
“The Great Escape is part crime caper and part epic. Soni pulls off a page-turning marvel revealing the lengths people will go for economic dignity—and the equal lengths others will go to wring profit from hope. This is a book you will never forget.”
—Lauren Markham, author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life
New York Times Book Review
An eye-opening look at the world of global itinerant workers who spend years away from home to support their families.”
New York Times bestselling author Naomi Klein
It reads like a binge-worthy thriller.”
Library Journal
★ 12/01/2022
This riveting memoir dives into the story behind one of the largest civil rights movements in recent U.S. history. Labor organizer Soni (founding dir., Resilience Force) helped hundreds of skilled workers from India escape from prison-like work camps and draw international attention to a form of human trafficking. This is a must-buy primary source depicting what a modern civil rights movement looks like in the United States. Soni details the corrupt and labyrinthine systems of U.S. immigration and Washington, DC, lobbying in accessible and gripping prose that is informed by hundreds of hours of interviews, years of directly organizing the movement, and thousands of pages of documents produced in the ensuing court cases. Beyond the research, this book stands out for its startlingly complex and intimate portraits of the immigrants, lawyers, immigration agents, and civil rights leaders encountered in these pages. The author reveals the way in which politics are woven into people's lives and daily realities, telling his own immigration story in the process. VERDICT This book will appeal to students of U.S. immigration and civil-rights history, as well as anyone who loves a beautifully told story.—Willem Marx
Kirkus Reviews
2022-11-12
Harrowing account of a latter-day revolt of people who were essentially enslaved—in 21st-century America.
Following Hurricane Katrina, the shipbuilding steelyards of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast needed welders and pipe fitters. India had many such workers, and a local so-called immigration lawyer teamed up with a couple of recruiters, one a former police officer, and, for a hefty fee, promised green cards to anyone who traveled to America. As immigrant rights activist Soni writes, one of those workers, who had spent years as a laborer in the United Arab Emirates, saw through the scheme, realizing that “any seasoned migrant worker knew that America let in only those with elite educations.” Still, with promised wages approaching $54,000 per year, he bit, landing in a work camp where the pay was not as promised, the food was execrable, and the treatment of workers was straight out of the antebellum South, complete with an updated version of a slave catcher. Said one overseer, “Our Indians have been dropping with sickness like flies.” Because the workers’ complaints were ignored, some decided to orchestrate the “great escape” of Soni’s title and, with the author’s help, organized a protest that took them on a march on Washington to demand justice. Writing with a sharp sense of irony, Soni recounts how the Department of Justice flubbed the initial investigations while Immigrations and Customs Enforcement actively colluded with the Mississippi shipbuilders against the workers. Soni and the workers hit plenty of dead ends as they tried to enlist the support of the liberal lions on Capitol Hill since “we were stuck in the minds of their congressional staffers as another ‘Interest group.’ ” In the end, even though the workers exposed “one of the largest human trafficking schemes in US history,” no charges were brought against the company or the scammers, a maddening conclusion to Soni’s agile account.
A searing exposé of corporate criminality and its governmental enablers.
