Til the Well Runs Dry

April 15, 2014
From the Caribbean island of Trinidad comes a saga ripe with heartbreak and joy. Trinidad is home to a striking diversity of people--descendants of African slaves, indentured Indians, Chinese laborers, Spanish colonizers and French land managers. American novelist Francis-Sharma, whose parents are Trinidadian immigrants, has a keen grasp of the customs and speech of the island's human patchwork. In 1943, when Farouk Karam catches sight of teenage Marcia Garcia, she's raising two disabled toddlers, scraping by as a seamstress. Farouk, a police officer from a middle-class Hindu family, is smitten with Marcia and goes to the local obeah woman in Tunapuna, looking for help. Soon after, the toddlers mysteriously disappear, Marcia is bereft, and Farouk's support leads to romance. They marry, but when Farouk brings Marcia to meet his parents, he's browbeaten by their disapproval and their revelation of the village gossip, which says the two lost boys were the children of Marcia and her father, who was driven from the village. Farouk wants the truth, but pride and a vow of silence prevent Marcia from speaking. Farouk leaves her and stays away until he can't bear it any longer--a pattern that repeats itself over two decades. Though they have four children, the Karams never live like a family (at least not for more than a few weeks, until someone's temper flares). Marcia leaves for America, but the arranged job turns out to be akin to slavery. When she escapes and finds herself homeless in New York, her determination to survive and bring her children over only strengthens. Sharma delivers a rich and satisfying debut on the ties of family, love and culture--and how those ties are sometimes better when broken.

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Starred review from April 15, 2014
On Trinidad, in 1943, Marcia Garcia, a splendidly talented, 16-year-old seamstress, is struggling to feed young twin boys left in her charge. Remarkably accomplished first-time novelist Francis-Sharma makes it clear on page one that Marcia is strong, courageous, and resourceful. She is also French, Portuguese, Spanish, black, and beautiful, and she has a galvanizing effect on a young, confident Indian policeman, Farouk Karam. Their love should have been joyous, and they should have been able to raise their four children in harmony. Instead, their relationship is poisoned by racism, poverty, gossip, and corruption. Farouk's parents vehemently object to their relationship, Marcia conceals horrific family secrets, and the obeah woman Farouk goes to for help betrays them. Francis-Sharma's consummate portrayal of her stubborn, conflicted characters subtly illuminates the rigidity and treachery of Trinidadian society. Yet when Marcia goes to America in 1962, after her oldest daughter gets tangled up in a dangerous plexus of politics and drugs, she is confronted by far more brutal forms of prejudice and abuse. Francis-Sharma's spellbinding, intimately detailed, psychologically lush, and suspenseful tale of racial and sexual trauma, hard work, love, and family devotion makes personal the injustice people endured in the years leading up to the civil rights movement in both multicultural Trinidad and segregated America.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)