Archives par étiquette : Lauren Francis-Sharma

CASUALTIES OF TRUTH de Lauren Francis-Sharma

From the author of Book of the Little Axe, nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, comes a riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller that explores the abuses of history and the costs of revenge.

CASUALTIES OF TRUTH
by Lauren Francis-Sharma
Atlantic Monthly Press, February 2025

Lauren Francis-Sharma’s two previous novels have established her as a deft chronicler of history and its intersections with flawed humans struggling toward justice. Her latest is a gripping novel set between Washington, DC and Johannesburg, South Africa that asks if we are ever truly able to escape our past and how to right an unquestionable wrong.

Prudence Wright seems to have it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, DC; and the past glories of a successful career at McKinsey, which now enables her to stay home and dedicate her days to her autistic son. When she and Davis head out for dinner with one of Davis’s new colleagues on a stormy summer evening, Prudence has little reason to think that certain details of her past might arise sometime between cocktails and the appetizer course. Yet when Davis’s new colleague turns out to be an old acquaintance, Matshediso, Prudence recalls the traumatic events of her childhood growing up in Baltimore and the formative time she spent in South Africa in 1996. There, she attended the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, which uncovered the many horrors and human rights abuses of the Apartheid state. These hearings fundamentally shaped her sense of righteousness and justice, and when Mat reveals the real reason for his reappearance, Prudence’s values will be put to a more difficult test than she has ever faced before.

Lauren Francis-Sharma, a child of Trinidadian immigrants has written about the Caribbean in both her novels. “‘Til the Well Runs Dry” loosely recounts the story of her grandmother’s mid-20th century journey to the United States, with feature articles in both the Washington Post in July 2014 and The Baltimore Sun in March 2015. Her latest, “Book of the Little Axe,” takes place in the late 18th century to the early 19th century, from the changing colonial rule on the island of Trinidad to the rugged terrain of Bighorn Mountain in western North America.

HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS de Lauren Francis-Sharma

From the acclaimed author of Book of the Little Axe, HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS is the harrowing story of a young Black girl’s genius and resilience in the face of a world that would render her invisible.

HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS
by Lauren Francis-Sharma
Atlantic Monthly Press, May 2023

Lauren Francis-Sharma’s debut novel ‘Til the Well Runs Dry was short-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and her second novel, Book of the Little Axe was praised as a “masterly epic” (Publishers Weekly) that spanned generations and continents. Now, she returns with HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS, a moving, richly imagined story of one family’s Great Migration and the foundations of Black Baltimore.
In 1904, the day the Great Baltimore Fire decimated the burgeoning city, William and Phyllis Battle welcome the arrival of their first child outside a whites-only hospital. The couple are recent arrivals in Baltimore, struggling to build for themselves the life they dreamed about down South. Phyllis, born with six fingers on each hand, has always been regarded with some suspicion by her community, but whether this suspicion is warranted or she’s simply misunderstood remains to be seen. Meanwhile, her daughter Margaret is coming of age, and demonstrates a keen intellect and photographic memory from a young age, but has never spoken a word. After William is injured in an industrial accident, Phyllis makes ends meet by teaching Margaret to use her extraordinary memory to count cards. However, the girl catches the eye of some unscrupulous characters who populate the gaming halls and dark alleyways of the city. And one day Margaret does not come home.
Set in the spring and Red Summer of 1919, a year whose racial terror incidents are now infamous, HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS is an evocative, suspenseful, and tenderly wrought story of an unforgettable family’s bitter fight to carve out a life on their own terms.

Lauren Francis-Sharma is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel ‘Til The Well Runs Dry, which was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize. She resides near Washington, DC with her husband and two children. She is the Assistant Director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.