Jean Judith Javier

For Horacia Somorostro, living has become a veritable reclusion perpetua, an imprisonment. Life’s spins and randomness has been very difficult, vicious and inexplicable for her. The year is 1997. Princess Diana dies in a violent car crash. The world is saddened by the death of Mother Theresa. And the Philippines is gripped with fear. It has become the kidnap capital of Asia.

In a town where friars lord it over the laymen and peasants, trust is a foreign word. As the townspeople prepare a despedida for the dismissed Mayor, suspicions arise, unraveling secrets that could change the course of their history.

Abner lives a drab, downcast, solitary existence. His wife has abandoned him for good. Working for pest control company Panther, his job remains his sole connection to the outside world. It seems going nowhere until he meets Viola, a client who is existence is as sad as his. Wife of a vain college teacher Dodie, Viola is a trapped bird. And meeting Abner seems to give her a chance to fly free. The house, infested with rats all around, becomes a powder keg of emotions and danger as sexual tension between Abner and Viola turns to illicit affair, all happening under Dodie’s nose. In order to extend their relationship, Abner devices something that will eventually lead to a tragedy that will change their lives forever.

Andres Bonifacio y de Castro is considered to be one of the most influential proponents in the struggle against Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines during the late nineteenth century. Bonifacio’s widow is searching for her husband’s missing dead body; as she and her followers stumble deeper into the jungle, they become entangled in the dense thicket of their own guilt and responsibility. The Spanish governor tries to play off the various rebel factions and their utopian visions against each other. At the same time, a badly wounded companion of Bonifacio reflects upon the victims a revolution inevitably creates. Mythology, facts and a vibrant sense of history merge.

1901, Balangiga. Eight-year-old Kulas flees town with his grandfather and their carabao to escape General Smith's Kill & Burn order. He finds a toddler amid a sea of corpses and together, the two boys struggle to survive the American occupation.