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

August 26, 2021 by admin Leave a Comment

https://ceciliabrainard.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/newspaperwidow.mp4

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

Filed Under: Fiction, Uncategorized Tagged With: Filipino murder mystery, philippine mystery

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Welcome!

I am a daugh­ter of the Philip­pines and an adopt­ed daugh­ter of Amer­i­ca. I have also trav­eled to many places so I am also a daugh­ter of the Earth. My expe­ri­ences have found their way into my sto­ries, which try to depict char­ac­ters caught in impor­tant moments in their lives, sit­u­a­tions that force them to act, make deci­sions, change. I try to see the world from my own point of view, not the dom­i­nant West­ern one, thus my inter­est in his­to­ry, cul­ture, and set­ting. But my char­ac­ters car­ry my sto­ries; they are the most impor­tant in my sto­ry-telling. I have to dive deep into them to under­stand their human­i­ty – their good­ness as well as their bad­ness, their beau­ty as well as their ugli­ness. Just like us. Just like each of us. I need to know where they came from, where they are now, so I under­stand where they are going. Just like us.

Please read my full biog­ra­phy here

 

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