by Randy Ribay
First published 2025
Francisco Maghabol works the California fields in 1930, spending his meager wages at dance halls while white men threaten him with violence. He questions whether leaving the Philippines was worth this harsh American reality. His son Emil faces prejudice at school and works nights at his aunt's restaurant in 1965 Stockton, determined to succeed in America even if it means rejecting his father's labor organizing. Emil's son Chris rebels against his controlling father in 1983 Denver, but a failed assignment on ancestral history pulls him off the football team and into the library, where he discovers Filipino history despite his father's dismissal of such interests as unpatriotic. In 2020 Philadelphia, Chris's son Enzo walks daily with his grandfather Emil during the pandemic, hoping to heal the rift between his father and grandfather. Each generation wrestles with what it means to be Filipino and American, father and son.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, american, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: father-son-conflict, found-family
Setting: California, Denver, Philadelphia, Philippines, Stockton
Period: 1930, 1965, 1983, 2020
288 pages · Paperback · Kokila