Book Description from Back Cover

Comments from Back Cover

I have been looking for a good story about the war.
- N.V.M. Gonzalez, author of The Bread of Salt and Other Stories (upon reading "Winning Hearts and Minds," one chapter of Magdalena.)

With her second novel, Magdalena, Cecilia Brainard adds new portraits to the gallery in Philippine literature. She has always had a strong sense of place. Here, she provides an inner landscape as well. Together, these provide the coordinates for the family secrets that bind the characters as securely as bloodlines.
- Linda Ty-Casper, author of The Stranded Whale

In this novel, Brainard blends a series of multiple perspectives to create a polyphony of voices that enacts Philippine society before and during the Second World War. The narrative is a nuanced vision of the workings of culture, social class, obligation and the Filipino personality.
- Rocio G. Davis, author of Transcultural Reinventions: Asian American and Asian Canadian Short Story Cycles

Background on Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia has received numerous awards for her literary achievements and for the service she has given her Filipino and Filipino American communities. In 1998, she receieved the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has also received a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award from the Los Angeles City Board of Education for her work dealing with Asian American youths. In 2001, she received a Filipinas Magazine Award for Arts, and a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District.

She teaches writing at UCLA-Extension and Uuiversity of Southern California.