In her first novel since Insurrecto, Gina Apostol assembles a vision
of Philippine history from the 19th century to present day in the
fragmented story of the Delgados, a family surviving across generations
of colonization, catastrophe, and war.
Rosario, a Filipina novelist in New York City, has just learned of her
mother's death in the Philippines. Instead of rushing home, she puts off
her return by embarking on a remote investigation into her family's
history and her mother's supposed inheritance, a place called La
Tercera, which may or may not exist. Rosario catalogs generations of
Delgado family bequests and detritus: maps of uncertain purpose, rusted
chicken coops, a secret journal, the words to songs sung at the family
home during visits from Imelda Marcos.
Each life Rosario explores opens onto an array of other lives and raises
a multitude of new questions. But as the search for La Tercera becomes
increasingly labyrinthine, Rosario's mother and the entire Delgado
family emerge in all their dizzying complexity: traitors and heroes,
reactionaries and revolutionaries. Meanwhile, another narrative takes
shape--of the country's erased history of exploitation and slaughter at
the hands of American occupying forces.
La Tercera is Gina Apostol's most ambitious, personal, and
encompassing novel: a story about what seems impossible--capturing the
truth of the past--and the terrible cost to a family, or a country, that
fails to try.
