Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

author and editor

The Newspaper Widow

The Newspaper Widow

Uni­ver­si­ty of San Tomas Pub­lish­ing House, 2017, soft­cov­er, 238 pages, ISBN 9780715068116 (2017) — avail­able from Laza­da and Shopee in the Philippines

PALH, 2021, soft­cov­er, 252 pages, ISBN 9781953716149 (2021)

Final­ist for the 37th Nation­al Book Award in the Philippines

Avail­able in Kindle

Avail­able in Amazon

East­wind Books of Berke­ley car­ries this title
2055 Uni­ver­si­ty Avenue, Berke­ley, CA 94704
Tel: 1–410-548‑2350

A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Mystery/Detective Novel

Short­list­ed for the Inau­gur­al Cir­i­lo F. Bautista Prize for the Novel

Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s nov­el, THE NEWSPAPER WIDOW, is a lit­er­ary mys­tery set in the Philip­pines in 1909, short­ly after the Spaniards lost to the Amer­i­cans, and the Amer­i­cans occu­pied the Philip­pines. The wid­ow Ines and her friend the French seam­stress Melisande solve the crime of the dead priest in the creek in order to free the son of Ines from jail. Inspired by her great-grand­moth­er who was the first woman pub­lish­er in the Philip­pines, Brainard has writ­ten a char­ac­ter-dri­ven nov­el that rais­es inter­est­ing and com­pli­cat­ed ques­tions about moral­i­ty and jus­tice while the pro­tag­o­nist search­es for the priest’s true killer. What begins as a mur­der mys­tery trans­forms into some­thing greater as love, loy­al­ty and friend­ship are test­ed and refined.

REVIEWS

LIBRARY JOURNAL
by David Keymer, Cleveland
When her hus­band dies in 1909, Ines Mace­da inher­its his news­pa­per, which is run­ning out of audi­ence and funds; she soon finds that she’s good at both the mon­ey side and the report­ing side. The paper gets a scoop about the dis­cov­ery of the body of a priest who had been miss­ing sev­er­al months, but any plea­sure in Ines’s coup is damp­ened when her son Andres is impris­oned on sus­pi­cion of mur­der­ing the priest, whose past turns out to be shadier than imag­ined. What fol­lows is part detec­tive sto­ry and part his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, set in the Philip­pines sev­en years after the con­clu­sion of the Philip­pine-Amer­i­can War (1899–1902) that cement­ed U.S. occu­pa­tion of the islands. The mys­tery ele­ments are com­pe­tent­ly plot­ted, and the char­ac­ters appeal­ing, and there’s a charm­ing long-dis­tance romance, with a hint of anoth­er yet to come. The book’s sig­nal virtue, though, is its big­heart­ed look at Fil­ipino cul­ture and soci­ety in 1909. With 23 books to her name, Brainard (Mag­dale­na) is hard­ly a novice, but most of her works have appeared out of small press­es (includ­ing her own Philip­pine Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary House), so she might be a new addi­tion to library collections.

VERDICT An old-fash­ioned nov­el isn’t a bad thing when it’s as well done as this one about peo­ple grow­ing, lov­ing, and rec­ti­fy­ing past mistakes.

***

THE MANILA TIMES
by Faye Valencia
For the most part, crime fic­tion, also called the “who­dunit,” is con­sid­ered escapist enter­tain­ment. After all, it fol­lows a for­mu­la. Crime — most often mur­der — serves as the cen­ter­piece of the sto­ry, whose main char­ac­ter is usu­al­ly a detec­tive or expert of some sort who is guar­an­teed to catch the per­pe­tra­tor. Con­sid­er: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s bril­liant sleuth Sher­lock Holmes clos­es every case, Stieg Larsson’s hack­er extra­or­di­naire Lis­beth Salan­der nev­er fails to dish out jus­tice, and so on.

In her paper “Mur­der as Social Crit­i­cism,” pro­fes­sor Cather­ine Nick­er­son the­o­rizes: “The world of the detec­tive nov­el is a place of untime­ly death, cru­el­ty, sus­pi­cion and betray­al. If detec­tive fic­tion is a lit­er­a­ture of escape, why would any­one want to be trans­port­ed to such anx­ious locales? Per­haps, detec­tive fic­tion pro­duces its plea­sur­able effects by allow­ing us to feel that no mat­ter how over­whelm­ing our own sit­u­a­tions seem, some­thing much worse is hap­pen­ing to some­one else.

The News­pa­per Wid­ow (Uni­ver­si­ty of San­to Tomas Pub­lish­ing House; 238 pages; 2017) by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard may be clas­si­fied as crime fic­tion, but it doesn’t real­ly fol­low the for­mu­la — and that, in this case, is a very good thing. The open­ing scene of Brainard’s mur­der mys­tery, set in the small town of Ubec in Cebu province, indi­cates that this isn’t your usu­al detec­tive novel.

“In the sum­mer of 1909, Ubec was over­run by rats. Rodents larg­er than cats scam­pered through­out the sea­side city, fear­less of man even dur­ing the day­time when the scorch­ing sun shone down on them expos­ing their hideous­ness — their wiry brown fur, long snouts, and naked tails as long as their bod­ies,” it reads.
Brainard’s dis­turbing­ly vivid intro­duc­tion serves as a warn­ing that peo­ple are not always what they seem, and there are far worse things that could hap­pen to a town than a rat infes­ta­tion. In fact, the rodents were the rea­son for the dis­cov­ery of Father Nico­las Zafra’s body. The novel’s title char­ac­ter, the qui­et­ly tena­cious Ines Mace­da, ends up cov­er­ing the sto­ry for The Ubec Dai­ly. The paper is some­thing that Ines inher­its from her late hus­band, the cere­bral Pablo.

Ines becomes more involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the priest’s mur­der when her son Andres is iden­ti­fied as the main sus­pect. In her attempt to clear her son’s name, Ines knocks over a few cans of worms and what-not. Thank­ful­ly, Brainard does not resort to cheap tricks when it comes to the novel’s dark revelations.

“My orig­i­nal inten­tion had been to write a mys­tery, but I rely too much on char­ac­ter and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment more than the plot, and so I present a nov­el that is more about Ines Mace­da than it is about the mys­tery of the dead priest,” she explains.

In this sense, The News­pa­per Wid­ow fol­lows crime fic­tion writer Ray­mond Chandler’s per­spec­tive on the genre. In his crit­i­cal essay “The Sim­ple Art of Mur­der,” Chan­dler asserts: “Mur­der, which is a frus­tra­tion of the indi­vid­ual and hence a frus­tra­tion of the race, may have and, in fact, has a good deal of soci­o­log­i­cal implication.”

The oth­er qual­i­ty that makes The News­pa­per Wid­ow stand out is that even the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters are ful­ly fleshed out. And they’re not just the basic per­sonas, either. For instance, the one who becomes the title character’s unex­pect­ed best friend is a French expa­tri­ate named Melisande More­au, who also hap­pens to be the town’s most sought-after dress design­er. Brainard gives Melisande the sauci­est lines. In one scene, the French­woman tells Ines: “I should go. I have to fin­ish the mayor’s wife’s gown. She’s in the Maria Ele­na pro­ces­sion of the car­ni­val. You know she is big-boned and it took me a while to come up with the right design, but final­ly I dis­cov­ered that the accent has to be on her big bosom. She has beau­ti­ful breasts, so we have some cleav­age, and we have to tell all eyes to look there…and not else­where.” Ulti­mate­ly, it is Melisande who con­vinces Ines that she should think of The Ubec Dai­ly as her own instead of just some­thing that was left behind by her husband.

Then there’s a char­ac­ter named Juan dela Cruz, whose com­mon name belies his extra­or­di­nary real­i­ty. Brainard writes: “Peo­ple learned that Juan dela Cruz was the only son of the own­er of San­doval Rum and that father and son were like oil and water. His father had want­ed Juan to go to busi­ness school, but Juan pre­ferred fine arts and music. His father had pres­sured him to mar­ry the daugh­ter of his busi­ness part­ner, an unac­cept­able sit­u­a­tion for Juan. Juan’s moth­er final­ly sold some of her jew­el­ry to finance her son’s stud­ies at the Reial Acad­e­mia Cata­lana de Belles Arts de Sant Jor­di in Barcelona.”

Juan goes on to fall in love with a Spaniard named Este­ban Magri. The cou­ple live in Ubec and are well-respect­ed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. The only real prob­lem they encounter is when Juan also becomes a sus­pect in Father Zafra’s murder.Aside from its com­plex char­ac­ters, The News­pa­per Wid­ow also con­tains a lot of his­tor­i­cal detail. These include even the most dis­turb­ing things, such as instru­ments of tor­ture. Brainard writes: “The gar­rote, an all-time Span­ish favorite, was used for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment dur­ing the Span­ish time, and for a few years, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment availed of the gar­rote for executions.

“The prin­ci­ple behind gar­rot­ing was sim­ple: Crush the lar­ynx while apply­ing pres­sure to the victim’s back. All you need­ed was a chair with a back rest and a neck clamp which could be tight­ened by crank, wheel, or hand, there­by stran­gling the victim.”

The News­pa­per Wid­ow may not have a flashy detec­tive as its pro­tag­o­nist, but it is def­i­nite­ly crime fic­tion that’s a cut above the usu­al who­dunits. Thanks to Brainard’s ele­gant prose and insights, it’s also a social com­men­tary that attempts to shine the light on the dark cor­ners of orga­nized reli­gion. It does not demo­nize the Church, but it rec­og­nizes the fact that there are a few demons pos­ing as angels with­in it.Brainard’s mas­ter­piece also reminds us that in life, things are not always resolved as neat­ly as we would like them to be. There’s a clear demar­ca­tion between good and bad, but there are also a lot of gray areas that we have to learn to navigate.

***

FOREWORD REVIEWS
by Mya Alexice
While at first glance The News­pa­per Wid­ow seems like a stan­dard his­tor­i­cal mys­tery, that couldn’t be far­ther from the truth. Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s nov­el is full and com­plex, over­flow­ing with tex­tured, ful­ly real­ized char­ac­ters who dri­ve the sto­ry on every page.

Ines Mace­da, the “news­pa­per wid­ow,” aims to clear her son’s name. He has been accused of mur­der­ing a priest. In addi­tion, Ines grieves for her deceased hus­band and com­bats the lin­ger­ing trau­ma of ear­li­er mis­car­riages. Her devel­op­ment is one of the shin­ing ele­ments of the novel—she feels tan­gi­ble, root­ed in the sto­ry and the setting.
The News­pa­per Wid­ow offers a nuanced glance into Fil­ipino soci­ety cir­ca 1909. It is a world rich with his­to­ry, myth, and rit­u­al; descrip­tions pulse with life, pro­vid­ing cru­cial insights into aspects of Fil­ipino cul­ture and world colo­nial his­to­ry, such as encoun­ters with the “Island of the Liv­ing Dead,” sec­tioned off to con­tain those inflict­ed with lep­rosy, and once the world’s largest lep­er colony.
While on the sur­face the book is a crime sto­ry, the plot is actu­al­ly lay­ered and unique. One of the novel’s great­est strengths is how it rais­es inter­est­ing, com­pli­cat­ed ques­tions about moral­i­ty and jus­tice while Ines search­es for the priest’s true killer: Is death ever an apt pun­ish­ment for a crime? Is revenge moral, or even nec­es­sary? Refresh­ing­ly, noth­ing is black and white.
For all of The News­pa­per Wid­ow’s great­ness, some­times there are too many lay­ers to the plot, and the end­ing falls a bit flat in com­par­i­son to the rest of the nar­ra­tive. But flaws are minor; over­all, this is a sol­id, sat­is­fy­ing work of literature.Cecilia Manguer­ra Brainard dis­plays mas­ter­ful sto­ry­telling skill in The News­pa­per Wid­ow, a unique, mem­o­rable mystery.
***

PRAISE

That super word­smith from Cebu, the Philip­pines, Cecil­ia Brainard, nev­er spins a bor­ing sto­ry. Her lat­est is a mas­ter who­dunit that is also a peri­od piece, a social doc­u­ment and most of all, a lit­er­ary jew­el. A must read for any hum­drum sea­son of the year. ~ F. Sion­il Jose, Philip­pine Nation­al Artist for Literature

Cecil­ia Brainard’s deft hand for tex­tured char­ac­ter and nuanced sto­ry­telling is on mag­nif­i­cent dis­play in her lat­est nov­el The News­pa­per Wid­ow. What begins as a mur­der mys­tery trans­forms into some­thing greater along the way, as love, loy­al­ty, and friend­ship are test­ed and refined. Short­list­ed for the inau­gur­al Cir­i­lo F. Bautista Prize for the Nov­el, Brainard’s nov­el is a cap­ti­vat­ing read. ~ Dean Fran­cis Alfar, author of Sala­man­ca and The Kite of Stars and Oth­er Stories

An intrigu­ing mys­tery and also very much the sto­ry of the deep­en­ing friend­ship between two women of oppo­site tem­pera­ments, Ines and Melisande, and of the men in their lives who love and have loved them. Beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten. Evoca­tive. A rich depic­tion of char­ac­ter, time and place that will live in a read­er’s mem­o­ry. ~ Eve La Salle Caram, Author of TRIO, A Cor­pus Christi Trilogy

Cecil­ia Brainard’s poet­ic new nov­el, The News­pa­per Wid­ow, is an enchant­i­ng read. She com­bines com­pelling char­ac­ters with an intrigu­ing mys­tery and page-turn­ing lit­er­ary sus­pense. I can’t think of a more fruit­ful his­tor­i­cal set­ting, the ear­ly years of the Unit­ed State’s colo­nial empire in Asia, here so beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered. Beneath the mys­tery this is a mov­ing sto­ry of a moth­er try­ing to pro­tect her adult son from prison. ~ Bri­an Ascalon Roley, Author of Amer­i­can Son and The Last Mis­tress of Jose Rizal.

This is not your run of the mill ’ ”who done it.” Mat­ter of fact, about halfway through The News­pa­per Wid­ow, you’ll be cer­tain that the lawyer did it – or did he? But what this is, is Cecil­ia Brainard weav­ing her mag­ic of cul­ture, folk­lore and myth to pro­duce a tapes­try of rich Fil­ipino his­to­ry and that she remains one of its pri­ma­ry arti­sans. ~ James E. Cher­ry, Author of Edge of the Wind

The News­pa­per Wid­ow by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard, treats read­ers to mean­ing­ful insights into his­tor­i­cal events and life in the Philip­pines in the ear­ly 1900s. A work of fic­tion, it is more than a mas­ter­ful­ly craft­ed and mul­ti-lay­ered mys­tery. ~ Lisa Sug­ui­tan Mel­nick for Pos­i­tive­ly Filipino

Excerpt

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2017/12/christmas-eve-1908-fiction-by-cecilia.html

“The Island of the Liv­ing Dead” a chap­ter from The News­pa­per Wid­ow which is about a lep­er colony, is part of the Philip­pine PEN Jour­nal HEALING, edit­ed by Her­minio Bel­tran, Jr., PEN Inter­na­tion­al 2014. You can read it here: page 28 or 15 in this link http://www.philippinepen.ph/Journal.pdf

Book Reviews 

Library Jour­nal Review by David Keymer, August 2021

The Mani­la Times Book Review by Faye Valen­cia, May 12, 2019

Fore­word January/February 2018

Book Review by Dr. Her­minia Meñez Coben, PALH, Novem­ber 9, 2018

Pos­i­tive­ly Fil­ipino Review by Lisa Sug­ui­tan Mel­nick, March 27, 2018 

Book Review by Dr. Pauli­no Lim, Jr. PALH, Decem­ber 29, 2020 

Book Review by Ange­les de Leon, Sep­tem­ber 2021 (for Ama­zon and Mary­knoll College)

Tags: Philip­pine mys­tery, Fil­ipino mys­tery, Fil­ipino nov­els, Fil­ipino detec­tive nov­els, Fil­ipino books, Philip­pine books, Philip­pine nov­els, Philip­pine mur­der mysteries