Ghosts of the Insurrection

This novel draws attention to a protagonist’s narrative of an obscure chapter of the Philippine-American War.  Full of action and drama, it vividly portrays an oppressed people's predicament driven into ambivalence, duplicity, and expediency that would compromise ideology but for the ultimate common good—Peace. It happened more than a hundred years ago, still relevant, and timely in our conflicted world today.

As an eyewitness, Felipe narrates his first-hand account of the Balangiga massacre and its Aftermath.  He recalls his ambivalent roles as a teenage Filipino houseboy of the massacred Company C. Tipped by his friends, he did not tell Capt. Connell about the plot. During the attack, he fought with them, fleeing with the surviving Yanqui soldiers to Basey. His insurrecto brother Victor took him to the Sohoton camps, throwing him to the other side of the conflict.  In the brutal retribution campaign by the Americans to turn Samar into a “howling wilderness,” he witnessed the cruel treatment of his compatriots, the tortures, the killings, and the summary executions of Maj. Waller’s mutinous cargadores, including his brother, Waller’s accused would-be assassin during the Lanang-Basey march. These atrocities shocked the conscience of America, leading to the court-martial of the General in command, the operations Major and his lieutenants.