This week, Tara Dorabji shares the path to publishing her debut novel, Call Her Freedom. A sweeping family saga and intergenerational love story, the book was also the winner of Simon & Schuster’s Books Like Us First Novel Contest, a competition for underrepresented writers to submit their manuscripts and win a book deal.

A deeply moving novel about one woman’s love for her family, this is an epic investigation of colonialism, militarization, and the loss and innocence on the journey to creating home.