Editor's note - This story contains descriptions of sexual violence. Reader discretion is advised.
The author of Pen America’s 2025-26 “most banned book” spoke Thursday at the Campbell County Library in Gillette – a facility that’s been fraught with book controversies for years.
Patricia McCormick is a two-time National Book Award finalist, journalist and author of multiple novels, including the 2006 volume “Sold” – the story of a 13-year-old Nepali girl sold into sex slavery in India.
“I don’t want this book in elementary or middle schools, obviously,” said McCormick. “But it does have, and has earned, a place in the curriculum of high schools and colleges.”
She said she was surprised to find some communities working to root it out of libraries, and she first heard of those efforts from a librarian in Virginia.
“She told me she’d been doxxed, and all her personal information was put online,” said McCormick. “When she went to the grocery store, people were calling her a pornographer.”
151 ’Sold’ Removals Since 2011
McCormick thought it was a “strange, isolated incident” at the time, but her book has been the target of removal efforts multiple times since.
Banned-books.org has documented 151 removals since 2011. The book was published in 2006.
In the national clash over book content, the meaning of “ban” is also disputed, however.
Removing books from a public library doesn’t purge them from the free market or legally forbid people from accessing them, Daniel Buck, director of Conservative Education Reform Network, emphasized in a 2023 column for the National Review.
In a similar column in 2022, he wrote, “calling every modification of a curriculum ‘censorship’ inhibits our ability to meaningfully discuss an essential question: What should our kids read?”
McCormick has written on other, harrowing themes, from self-harm to addiction to post-traumatic stress disorder.
She’s been speaking in Gillette this week, and addressed a Thursday audience at the Campbell County Library on the impact of libraries on her life.
Controversy-Fraught Library
Campbell County is one of the most controversy-fraught libraries in Wyoming, as disputes around sexually graphic books in the kids’ section surfaced in about 2021.
The library board saw turnover in the years that followed. Then it fired the library’s director, Terri Lesley, in 2023.
Lesley had defended the books amid ardent pushback from concerned residents.
She sued the county, and settled in 2025, for $700,000.
Lesley is waging another lawsuit against the local family Hugh, Susan and Kevin Bennett over their public statements against her and the books, and Hugh and Susan’s attempt to spark a criminal obscenity prosecution.
McCormick said she has interviewed Lesley in the past, but the significant coincidence of her speaking at the library of Lesley's showdowns didn't hit her until early this week, when she drove past it.
"And I thought, this is really a statement about this library, the librarians in particular, and their commitment to serving their community and bringing in all kinds of books and all kinds of materials," she said.
Our Review
Cowboy State Daily read and reviewed “Sold” on Wednesday.
It is far less graphic than the books residents have challenged for removal or restriction in the Campbell County Library. Those include “How Do You Make A Baby,” which depicts cartoon genitalia, “This Book Is Gay,” which gives instructions on gay sex acts, and “Sex Is A Funny Word,” which depicts a cartoon child performing a solo sex act.
The most sexually graphic scene in “Sold” describes, in oblique terms, the devastating rape of a young girl whose stepfather has sold her to a brothel in India to pay off his gambling debts.
“He is squeezing my breast with his hand, like someone shopping for a melon,” the girl narrates. “I try to push him away, by my arm, stone-heavy from (being drugged), doesn’t move.”
She describes the man undressing and getting on top of her, “and something hot and insistent is between my legs. He grunts and struggles, trying to fit himself inside me. With a sudden thrust I am torn in two.”
McCormick said the book’s purpose is to educate people about the horrors of child trafficking. She wrote it after extensive field research in Nepal and India.
“I very much understand the desire to protect children from things they’re not ready for, but to call this book pornography is so disrespectful to the girls and the women that I interviewed for the book,” she said.
The girls shared their stories to warn the world and urge action, she said.
“I mean, pornography is designed to arouse or titillate,” said McCormick. “They didn’t share their stories to titillate, but they shared their stories because it was their life.”
Wyoming Hasn’t Though
Wyoming Moms For Liberty has not taken a formal position on “Sold” or any other individual title, Wyoming state coordinator Sarah Bieber said in a Wednesday email to Cowboy State Daily.
“Our focus remains on informing parents about materials available in public institutions that serve minors and supporting their right to direct the upbringing of their own children,” she said.
The group has supported legislation that would curb sexually-graphic content from entering children’s sections of public libraries while remaining to adults, she noted.
The most recent iteration of that legislation failed narrowly in the state Senate earlier this year.
The group also doesn’t object to McCormick’s visit, Bieber said.
“Parents can review the book and decide for themselves and their children whether to attend or engage with the material,” she added.
“Sold” is not among the many books that has made headlines for public controversies in Wyoming.
Not To Make A Point
Elizabeth Romero, the 31-year-old mom, veteran and “nontraditional” aged Gillette Community College student organized McCormick’s Campbell County tour, as a member of the college creative writing club.
Romero said she didn’t invite McCormick to “rock the boat,” but out of genuine appreciation for her work.
“I stand by her as an author, and her willingness to tell the hard stories, so people going through it can have access to it,” said Romero.
She said she read “Sold” between middle school and high school and found it both hard-hitting and digestible for young adults.
She said she read McCormick’s other books, including one on self-harm, and another on watching a loved one struggle with addiction.
“I know growing up I struggled with both those things,” she said. “When I was able to find her books, and read about things I was struggling with, I found peace, and a hope that things do get better; that I’m not stuck where I am and I’m not alone.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
