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.
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Gina Apostol is the author of the novels Insurrecto, Gun Dealers’ Daughter, Bibliolepsy, and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata. She is the winner of two Philippine National Book Awards, the PEN/Open Award, and the Rome Prize. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, Leyte, in the Philippines.
Jessica Hagedorn is the author of Dogeaters, The Gangster Of Love, Dream Jungle, Toxicology, Danger And Beauty. She has edited three major anthologies: Manila Noir, Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology Of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home In The World. Work as a playwright includes the stage adaptations of Dogeaters and The Gangster Of Love. Work in film includes the screenplay for Shu Lea Cheang’s first feature, Fresh Kill. Prizes and honors include the 2021 Rome Prize for Literature, the Guggenheim Fiction Fellowship, the Before Columbus American Book Award, and the Philippine National Book Award. Her latest projects are a musical play and a hybrid memoir.