July and Everything After
Maya's journey from America to her birth country was meant to be a nostalgic visit. Instead, it became a fight for survival.
On the eve of Maya's 22nd birthday, civil war breaks out in Sri Lanka. During what will become known as "Black July," Maya is targeted and attacked in the organized massacres and pogroms against minorities, and she barely escapes the genocidal chaos.
Haunted by the horrors she witnessed, Maya returns to the US and tries to rally a diverse group of allies to help expose the atrocities in her birth country, among them her Norwegian-American best friend, a magnanimous Catholic nun, and a gifted young man from her past.
Bent on justice, Maya isn't prepared for the unexpected twists and turns, and confrontations with a nemesis that will test her resolve. As the war and humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka intensify, so does Maya's disillusionment with herself and realization that a mysterious mentor whose wisdom she once ignored holds the key to her future.
Fans of Paolo Coelho, Amy Tan, Vaddey Ratner, and Khaled Hosseini will be captivated by July and Everything After, a modern tale of resilience and transformation against extraordinary odds and war.
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"Compelling... Allie Nava's words shine... July and Everything After creates a riveting story of survival and growth made all the more powerful for its roots in the real world. It embraces the rationale and motivations behind immigrant choices and experiences, unfolds the process of assimilation on many different levels, and reveals issues of citizenship and adaptation.
Its special blend of emotional-driven experience embraces how people become 'stuck' in sadness and frustration-and how Maya digests, comes to understand, and avoids similar traps in her own evolutionary process will give readers and book club discussion groups much food for thought.
Libraries and readers seeking a story of immigrant experience, a dovetailing of American and Sri Lankan experience, and most of all, a delicately woven tale of healing will welcome July and Everything After for its hard-hitting inspections of one young woman's life before, during, and after a cataclysmic event that changed her life trajectory."
-Midwest Book Review
"This universal story explores the horrors of state-sponsored mob violence that targets minorities, and the ripple effects of such traumas to diaspora communities. As a young woman grapples with feelings of social isolation and shame, she learns that activism comes in many forms and that helping others is a path toward healing her own soul."
-Avril Benoît, CEO of Doctors Without Borders
"Nava's debut fiction novel crafts a powerful narrative of a young American-Tamil woman who must navigate life after surviving the violence of Sri Lanka's Black July...
Nava's writing is laced with vulnerability, never shying away from the raw... Maya grapples with survivor's guilt...isolation... Nava deftly spotlights her decision to transform those feelings... on a journey of self-discovery...
Nava presents this...striking a balance between fact and fiction as she weaves the harrowing truth of Black July and its aftermath into this emotional narrative of transformation and resilience. The novel's quick pacing keeps its audience engaged, and readers will find themselves immersed in Maya's journey as she...comes to recognize 'the nature of humans [and] the nature of the world...'"
-BookLife Reviews / Publishers Weekly
