'Til the Well Runs Dry

The New York Times Sunday Book Review Shortlist


Booklist Starred Review


O, The Oprah Magazine "10 Titles to Pick Up Now"


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


"[A] vivid debut." -People


"I was swept away.... like the first time I read my aunt's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God." -Lucy Ann Hurston


A glorious and moving multi-generational, multicultural saga that begins in the 1940s and sweeps through the 1960's in Trinidad and the United States

Lauren Francis-Sharma's 'Til the Well Runs Dry opens in a seaside village in the north of Trinidad where young Marcia Garcia, a gifted and smart-mouthed 16-year-old seamstress, lives alone, raising two small boys and guarding a family secret. When she meets Farouk Karam, an ambitious young policeman (so taken with Marcia that he elicits the help of a tea-brewing obeah woman to guarantee her ardor), the risks and rewards in Marcia's life amplify forever.

On an island rich with laughter, Calypso, Carnival, cricket, beaches and salty air, sweet fruits and spicy stews, the novel follows Marcia and Farouk from their amusing and passionate courtship through personal and historical events that threaten Marcia's secret, entangle the couple and their children in a scandal, and endanger the future for all of them.



'Til the Well Runs Dry tells the twinned stories of a spirited woman's love for one man and her bottomless devotion to her children. For readers who cherish the previously untold stories of women's lives, here is a story of grit and imperfection and love that has not been told before.