The Newspaper Widow, novel by Cecilia Brainard — Video and Book Review

Book Review Library Jour­nal August 2021

Mys­tery

The News­pa­per Wid­ow by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard

Philip­pine Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary House, Sept. 2021

252 p. ISBN 9781953716149 pap $17.95 M

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.

Review by David Keymer, Cleve­land, July 16, 2021

Tags: Philip­pine nov­el, Philip­pine mys­tery, Philip­pine detec­tive, Philip­pine mur­der mys­tery, Fil­ipino nov­el, Fil­ipino mur­der mys­tery, Fil­ipino detective