A singularly effervescent novel pivoting around the disappearance of
an American businessman in the Philippines and the long-suffering son,
jilted lover, slick police commissioner, misguided villain, and
supernatural saviors who all want a piece of him.
Mourning
the recent loss of his mother, twentysomething Benicio — aka
Benny — travels to Manila to reconnect with his estranged father, Howard.
But when he arrives his father is nowhere to be found — leaving an
irritated son to conclude that Howard has let him down for the
umpteenth time. However, his father has actually been kidnapped by a
meth-addled cabdriver, with grand plans to sell him to local terrorists
as bait in the country’s never-ending power struggle between insurgents, separatists, and “democratic” muscle.
Benicio’s search for
Howard reveals more about his father’s womanizing ways and suspicious
business deals, reopening the old hurts that he’d hoped to mend.
Interspersed with the son’s inquiry and the father’s calamitous life in
captivity are the high-octane interconnecting narratives of Reynato
Ocampo, the local celebrity-hero policeman charged with rescuing Howard; Ocampo’s ragtag team of wizardry-infused soldiers; and Monique, a
novice officer at the American embassy whose family still feels
feverishly unmoored in the Philippines.
With blistering forward momentum, crackling dialogue, wonderfully bizarre turns, and glimpses
into both Filipino and expat culture, the novel marches toward a
stunning climax, which ultimately challenges our conventional ideas of
family and identity and introduces Yates as a powerful new voice in
contemporary literature.
