Inside Lauren Francis-Sharma’s obsession with truth

Born in Baltimore in the United States to Trinidadian parents, Lauren Francis-Sharma has built an acclaimed literary career by unearthing hidden histories and untold truths.

The author of ’Til the Well Runs Dry, Book of the Little Axe, and her latest novel, Casualties of Truth (2025), Francis-Sharma’s fiction spans continents and centuries— from a small village on Trinidad’s North Coast to 18th-century Montana to post-apartheid South Africa—yet always circles back to questions of identity, justice, and forgiveness.

During a recent visit to Trinidad for a Bocas Lit Fest event, she spoke about the origins of her writing life and the enduring obsession with “truth” that threads through all her books.

’Til the Well Runs Dry (2015), her debut, was inspired by the life of her grandmother, who grew up in a small village on Trinidad’s North Coast, following her for two decades through tumultuous and life-changing events and decisions.

Her second novel, Book of the Little Axe (2021), ranges further back in time to the end of the 18th century, following a young Trinidadian woman who leaves the island of her birth to make a new life among the Native American Crow Nation in Montana, while bearing a burden of family secrets.

Her third book, Casualties of Truth, was published in February 2025. Described by its publisher as “a riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller”, the novel introduces readers to Prudence Wright, an American woman (with Trini roots) with a life of relative privilege in the suburbs of Washington, DC. One night at an upscale restaurant, with no warning, she encounters a man she had met 30 years previously, when she was a young law student visiting South Africa. There follows an eruption of injustice and violence, both past and present, as Prudence grapples with big questions of truth and forgiveness.

Visiting Trinidad to research her forthcoming fourth novel, Francis-Sharma was hosted on October 28 by the Bocas Lit Fest at a special event at The Writers Centre. She also sat down to answer a few questions from the Bocas Lit Fest team about the origins of her writing career and the obsession with “truth”.

Where did writing fiction start for you?

Lauren Francis-Sharma: I always knew I liked writing, but I didn’t think about it as a career. I had two Trinidadian parents, who were very practical. It was very clear that I needed to do something that was going to earn a living. The other thing I wanted to do was practise law. And so I took that path and decided I was going to be a corporate lawyer.

In about my second year, I was working on a deal where a client had come in from the UK. My supervisor told the client he was gonna leave me to handle some things, and the client said to him, ‘You’re leaving me with the coach check girl?’ At that moment, I left the room.

I went down to a bookstore on Third Avenue in New York, and I had a little cry, and when I looked to my right, standing beside me was Stephen King. I went up to him, and I said, ‘Oh, my God, I love you.’ And he didn’t say a word. I always like this story because it reminds me of how secondary characters don’t actually have to do anything in order for a primary character to feel motivated.

I went home that night and began to write the first novel I would ever finish. Not the first one I published, but the first novel that I finished. I like to think of that as my origin story.

Casualties of Truth moves between the near present and South Africa in 1996, during the time of the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Like the character Prudence, you were a young lawyer on assignment in South Africa at that time. It’s not an autobiographical novel, but what was it like revisiting that time of your life through your fiction?

It was painful a little. I took very copious notes when I was there, and I saved those notes for almost 30 years. During COVID, when everyone was wondering if we were ever gonna have normal lives again, I was thinking a lot about every aspect of my life and where I had pivoted and changed. South Africa changed me a lot. The experience of being there made me feel much more like a global citizen. Made me far more cynical and wary of governments. I’d had no idea I was going to end up doing anything with those notes other than clutching them really tightly.

Your three novels have very different settings in place and time. When you look at them in retrospect, do you see a kind of bigger thematic pattern? Is there a particular question that makes an arc across the three books?

I’ve thought a lot about this. I think I’m very, very interested in unearthing truths. If I think about ’Til the Well Runs Dry, it was about unveiling my grandmother, who would never have told me her story. When I think about Book of the Little Axe, I think about histories that were never kept and people who often weren’t remembered. And when I think about Casualties of Truth, I think about, again, stories that just need to be given some space and some light. So if there’s one thing, I think that would be it.