'Til the well runs dry : a novel / Lauren Francis-Sharma.

"As universally touching as it is original" - The New York Times

I really didn't like to put this book down after I began reading it. If I had to leave it for a while, I practically had one eye on it the whole time, longing to get back to reading. It's a wonderful book, with a humane and caring feeling underlying all the problems it depicts.

The novel takes place mainly in Trinidad and opening in 1943, ending in 1965. The main characters are Marcia Garcia and later her husband, Farouk Karam. The book's cover has images suggesting that one of the subjects might be sewing, but beyond the fact that Marcia has a dressmaking business, there are no references to the craft.

Booklist review: Starred review. "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."