North Delta author Gurjinder Basran is among the finalists for this year鈥檚 BC Book Prizes.

The first-time novelist is up for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for her book Everything Was Good-Bye.

Basran, 38, has drawn partly from personal experience for her debut novel, which centres around a young Indo-Canadian woman who is struggling as she grows up, trying to find a balance between her desire for independence and what is culturally acceptable.

Like Basran herself, Meena is raised by her widowed mother. She knows she can鈥檛 have the freedom of her peers, but isn鈥檛 necessarily prepared to submit to the life鈥攚hich includes an arranged marriage鈥攖hat is expected of her.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a book about a woman鈥檚 desire to be free, to find her voice,鈥� says Basran, a mom-of-two who met her husband in college.

Meena, she says, is so concerned with pleasing everyone else, that she doesn鈥檛 know what she wants.

鈥淪he just knows what she doesn鈥檛 want.鈥�

Everything Was Good-Bye was a top 100 finisher in the 2006 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (as a manuscript) and won the 2010 Search for the Great B.C. Novel Contest.

Basran is a relative newcomer alongside other Book Prize nominees, such as Douglas Coupland and Jack Whyte.

A total of 35 authors are shortlisted in seven categories. Winners will be awarded a collective cash prize worth $14,000.

The list of nominees for 27th annual prizes was released March 10, and the winners will be announced at a gala event April 21.

To learn more about Basran and her book, visit .