The death of a Canadian businessman in South Africa is the event that sparks the plot of this book, and brings together three women. The book shows their differences, and proves to be an emotional and thought-provoking novel. WatchMojo.com was lucky enough to speak with Ruby-Sachs about her page-turning debut.
WatchMojo - Tell us about your book, “The Water Man’s Daughter.”
Emma Ruby-Sachs - The Water Man’s Daughter is the story of three very different women who are thrown together by a violent crime, the murder of a Canadian water company executive in South Africa: the daughter who flies over to find out what happened to her father, the young activist who is forced to keep an eye on her, and the policewoman torn between solving the mystery and keeping the heroes of her community safe. It’s all set against the struggle for life’s most basic needs that is waged every day across Africa and much of the developing world. I tried to write a story about an important event in my life and found out that the world around me had a much more important and exciting story of its own
to tell.
WM - What themes and ideas are at play here?
ERS - This book is about survival. It’s about dealing with the legacy of parents, of revolution and of past actions. It’s about love and sacrifice and also about every human being’s capacity for violence, kindness and compromise.
WM - Where did the inspiration for this book come from?
ERS - I spent six months living in South Africa in 2003 and wrote a University thesis about the privatization of water and electricity. At the end of all that research, I realized that I had more to say, the kind of stories that non-fiction doesn’t make room for. And I wanted to use a voice and language not permitted in a purely academic setting. So I began to write short stories about a set of characters. After a while, I starting to think that there could be a novel in all that writing.
WM - Three main women help drive the plot: How are each of these women similar and how do they differ?
ERS - Nomsulwa, the activist, and Zembe, the police officer, share a history. But they have chosen different paths. Zembe works within the system to create change and to ensure survival while Nomsulwa works outside the system, creating a space that is entirely unique. Claire and Nomsulwa both have strong father figures in their lives who have left them with a painful legacy. But they come from very different classes and cultures. Still, they form a bond that is extremely strong.
WM - How did you go about attaining a sense of realism in this story? Also, how realistic is this novel?
ERS - All the factual information in the novel is heavily researched. The political climate, the struggles facing the communities, even many of the vignettes about setting or peripheral characters come from real occurrences. The characters themselves are fiction, composites of people I met and people I imagined meeting. But the writing all comes from my experience living in South Africa. The smells, sights and sounds are all true to my experience in that amazing country.
EMMA RUBY-SACHS’s journalism has been published in The Nation and The Huffington Post. A graduate of Wesleyan University and the University of Toronto law school, Ruby-Sachs lived in South Africa for periods in 2003 and 2004 while studying. She has worked as a civil litigator in Windsor and Toronto and currently works with Avaaz, a progressive online organization. Emma lives in Brooklyn.
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