The author Lilly Barnes fictional character is based on her own mother, a concert pianist in the Ural mountains of the Soviet Union, the city of Beresniki. Her German father, a mining engineer, was there on contract building mines. The novel Mara touches on the authors experience through Europe and immigration to Canada. Although the story is fictional it touches on the experience of immigrants and a point of view that is unique to the author but not unfamiliar to many living in Canada today.

Lilly Barnes was born in Russia, studied at the University of Toronto and the University of Vienna, and worked for many years as an arts journalist and scriptwriter for CBC Radio and Television, including, for its entire run, the "Mr. Dressup" show. Mara is her first novel.