ABOUT THE BOOK

Celing, a young woman born out of a love affair between a househelp and the eccentric son of a former revolucionario during the Philippine Revolution on the throes of American occupation, goes to Manila to seek opportunities. She befriends a young law student who will be smitten by her earnestness. However, as the Second World War breaks out,  Celing is forced to go back to her grandmother in San Isidro Labrador, a small town in the central plains of Luzon where events in the novel happen.

This haunting and disquieting novel focuses on Celing’s relationship with her adoptive grandmother, her search for the mother she never knew, and the men and women she meets through the war years in San Isidro.

Celing will move within the emotional orbit of maternal loss and personal longing and the dissonant journey of helping a group of women as they navigate a charged, fractious, and unfamiliar territory in war-torn Philippines.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patria Rivera’s writing has appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, Fireweed, and Oxford University Press’s Perspectives in Ideology, and other local and international publications. Author of four poetry books, co-editor of Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing (2024), as well as finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, Rivera charts new waters in her debut novel.

Her short stories, essays and poems have appeared in The Weekly Nation, Asia Philippines Leader Pilipino edition, and EnRoute. She was a fellow at the Hawthornden Castle International Residency in Scotland (fiction), the Banff Centre for the Arts (poetry), the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University (narrative editing), the International Institute for Journalism (journalism) in Berlin (Germany), the International Development Centre (communication) in Sydney (Australia), the Silliman University  National Writers Workshop, and the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop.