Award winning Canadian author Miriam Toews (pronounces Taves)  has won awards for her complicated and slow-moving novels featuring young adults who, marked by traumatic events, are forced to leave their home communities and seek new beginnings. 

19 year old Canadian born Irma Voth lives on the fringe of a Mennonite farming community in northern Mexico. Estranged from her Mexican husband and isolated from her Mennonite relatives and neighbors, she leads a lonely existence until hired as a translator for film crew.  Threatened by her father, and haunted by past memories, she flees, not to  Canada, as expected, but to Mexico City.

Here, in an interview with a Canadian broadcaster, Toews discusses her life and the writing of Irma Voth.

Toews drew inspiration for Irma Voth  from her early Mennonite upbringing and her experience as an actress in  Silent Light. She is featured in scenes in this film clip.