Brown Rice, Book One, A Boy Named Spike is set in Manila, where a family struggles with poverty in the 50s, achieves middle class prosperity in the 60s, and tries to stay alive during the turbulent years of the Marcos dictatorship in the 70s.
Brown Rice is about a father and son. One, a writer/director who started his own ad agency and would sometimes play golf with President Ferdinand Marcos in the 60s. The other, a boy with learning disabilities in grade school, poor grades in high school, and too skinny and weak to survive the grueling initiation rites of the fraternity in college.
It is a coming of age story of Spike who struggles to follow in his father's footsteps. He dreams of joining the Upsilon fraternity, marry a sorority girl, and be a big shot advertising executive, just like Dad. Written with breathtaking pace and often humorous because, in spite of Spike's determination, not everything goes according to plan.
One reviewer called the novel engaging, delightful and often hilarious. She didn't expect this coming-of-age novel to be a page turner.
From an early review: In the Philippines, Teddy, an advertising man, struggles to support a growing family in the 1950s. Realizing that success comes from connections, he uses his fraternity and political network to raise his family out of poverty. His son, Spike, wants to follow in his footsteps by going to the same high school and university to join the same fraternity.
Spike's coming-of-age through his school years are filled with mistakes, frustrations and failures that make him wiser and more determined. Brown Rice is a memoir that reads like an adventure-humor-romance-thriller set in Philippines during the turbulent years of the Marcos dictatorship of the 60s and 70s. Spike, who idolizes JFK, joins the fraternity of Marcos, and is in search of the woman a psychic claims would change his life.
Spike's father is an adman who wrote a musical he wants to sell to Broadway. Spike's mother is an art teacher struggling to raise eight children on a tight budget as her husband battles poor health and prejudice for better employment.
The backdrop of Manila in the 70s, student demonstrations, barricades, and tyranny puts the reader in the midst of the First Quarter Storm, the unrest and turmoil that preceded the declaration of Martial Law, the start of the Marcos dictatorship. The characters from high school, college and the fraternity who get involved in Spike's life are funny, genuine and unforgettable.
In Book One, Book Two and Book Three, the story starts in 1958 and builds in a cascading series of conflict, struggle and victory. Each book can stand on its own but the trilogy roller coasters to a satisfying conclusion.
