Strangers still email Sharon Bala about her powerful NL Reads novel

About two years ago, Sharon Bala spent a few months pulling a small suitcase on wheels behind her through airports all over the world while travelling with her husband, cramming it into overhead bins on planes, afraid to check it in case it got lost.

The case wasn't full of clothes or keepsakes. It was mostly full of notebooks.

Some contained notes about the Sri Lankan civil war and the MV Sun Sea, a Thai cargo ship carrying nearly 500 Sri Lankan asylum seekersthat was intercepted by Canadian authorities and brought to shorein British Columbia in 2010.

Most contained several handwritten drafts of her first novel, The Boat People, which tells the story of Mahindan and his six-year-old son,Sellian, who were on that boat fleeing that war.

The novel weaves four different narratives, set in two different times, into its central story, atechnical feat that took a lot of planning, mappingand, yes, notebooks.

"I would have done something much simpler if I had known what a juggling act it was going to be," Balasaid, laughing.

"I think doing your first book, you have no idea. So you just take this big thing on not realizing how difficult it's going to be and how many drafts are going to be needed and how many cue cards literally, colour-coded cue cards moving around."

The book earned a spot on last year's CBC Canada Reads roster and was one of the year's 10bestselling books in the country.

It's also this month's pick for the NL Reads competitionand, thanks to Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries,you can download the eBook right here.

Organized by the province's libraries, NL Reads asks people to readfour new Newfoundland and Labrador novels andvote for their favouritein the leadup to a gala event in Februaryin St. John's, where one book will be crowned the winner.

Big ambitions for a first novel

The Boat People's four narrative threadsall work togetherto deliver a harrowing,emotional gut-punch.

One thread tells the story of Mahindan and Sellian'sescape from Sri Lanka, and another tells their story of finally arriving in Canada only to slam into a system that is unprepared and deeply suspicious of the refugees:Mahindan is locked awayin a detention centre, and Sellianis taken from him.

Another tells us the story of PriyaRajasekaran, the pair's reluctant lawyer.

The fourth is about Grace Nakamura, who, through cushy government connections, finds herself adjudicating the boat people's cases, all while aconservative politicianleans on her to find a fewterrorists in the mix in order to justifygovernment's treatment of the refugees and feedthe public'sfears.

Each of thecharacters lends his or her own perspective to the immigrant experience while playing a hand in Mahindan and Sellian'sfate.

Striking a chord

Bala said she set out to write a book about aSri Lankan family based in Toronto, with the MV Sun Sea's arrival in the background. But as she did more and more research, she knew her main character had to be one of the people on that boat.

"The book I meant to write just wasn't worth writing," she said; the story of Mahindan and Selian had a more important message.

"I got an email from a reader who said, 'Thank you for this book.I was one of the UN peacekeepers who was stationed in Sri Lanka and reading your book, I realized I knew so little about the war and the Tamil side of things.'"

Writing the book also had a big impact on Bala herself.

"I really did feel my privilege of being able to do some of the the awful research. Actually, more upsetting for me, personally, was going deep into online comments and certain websites that are set up to be anti-immigrant," she said.

"That ability to close the book as a reader, that ability to shut the computer down as a writer that's not something that those people who live in those situations have."

As far as being and becoming a writer, Balasaid she has been writing since she was a kid, but never imagined being a writer could actually be a real job.

"But then I moved here! And everyone says, 'Writer is a real job.' And then I started writing," she said.

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