The Body Auction
In The Body Auction, author and real-life nurse practitioner Lisa Mathis assumes the pen name of protagonist Layla Matthews, wife, mother, and fictional intensive care nurse in an unsettling story about human trafficking.
The opening scenario is worthy of an Edgar Allan Poe nightmare. Layla wakes up in the dark, numb and weak and unable to move. She can smell flowers. She hears weeping and the tortured voices of her husband and daughter, the sounds of a funeral, loved ones gathered at the side of a casket; and Layla understands where she is.
The escape from her coffin is only the beginning of an exposé of a horrific network of kidnapping, sexual slavery and the black-market sale of human organs. It’s an international business conducted in hospitals, private planes and luxury hotels. The operation involves hundreds of people — physicians, morticians, police, pilots — even tuxedoed waiters carrying silver platters of finger food. The world Mathis paints is surreal and sickening, more so when one is reminded that every detail included here is being re-enacted in the real world today.
Our girl Layla topples out of her coffin into a world of terror and unspeakable acts. While the story unspools, the proverbial plot thickens. Her daughter Aubrey disappears, the new nurse Kaleigh turns out to be an FBI agent, and hospital patients are wheeled into surgery but end up in the morgue. Layla becomes enmeshed in the hunt for the villainous doctors who are peddling human organs and the international buyers and sellers in the sex-slave trade.
Rediscovering the romance and safety in her marriage with her handsome husband Tripp helps center Layla, until something he says rings false. Hours later, Layla’s skin grows cold and she wonders if her beloved husband could be part of the evil schemes. Would he put his own daughter in danger?
Layla ricochets from suspect to victim, trying to piece together enough clues to find the killers and save what victims are still alive. Poolside at a luxurious resort, she encounters a beautiful young woman who secretly confides that she — like Layla — was abducted to be sold. Unlike Layla, she did not escape.
Layla’s efforts to help the FBI find her daughter gets her abducted again and prepped for sale as sex slave or unwitting organ donor. She barely escapes, naked and bloodied, but still determined to find her daughter and help the tragic slave-wife she met.
We trail behind Layla in her quest. She’s indefatigable, fearless and stubborn. In her new role of detective and incipient heroine, she questions herself, her marriage and her job.
The human trafficking industry and human organs black market are both very real and they’re growing. The heinous effects are worldwide, and Mathis’s debut novel is as educational as it is unnerving.
The Body Auction is now available for purchase. Learn more about the author on her BookTrib author page.
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