A Light in the Cane Fields

To My Gather Colleagues:

My novel, A LIGHT IN THE CANE FIELDS has just made it as a semifinalist in Penguin Books-Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award. Publishers Weekly, who reviewed the full manuscript for Penguin's editorial board, gave it a "tour-de-force" review (see below). If it is not a big imposition, would it be possible for you to check it out? The link is http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00121WDW4 and the download of the excerpt is free. Also, kindly give it an honest review and rating if you have time.

Manuscript review by Publishers Weekly, an independent organization
This coming-of-age story chronicling a Filipino boy's wrenching passage from son of privilege to guerilla fighter is a stylistic tour-de-force. From its first lines, the saga of Jando Flores seizes readers with the same chilling intensity as the cold water that wraps around Jando's chest as he hides in a river to escape a gang of pillaging cutthroats. While such murderous militias dispossess cane farmers in the Central Plains of the Philippines, the NPA (a brutal leftist insurgency) combats the government troops of Ferdinand Marcos and the ruthless sugar barons who steal the poor farmers' land. Jando, whose family owns a plantation, is forced into the NPA, but he remains a sensitive soul, brimming with empathy for his fellow countrymen-even as he watches others, like his beloved uncle, morph into fierce, sadistic killers. Incandescent descriptions radiate from the pages of this book. When a wounded Jando wakes, after narrowly escaping a death squad, he sees "marmalade light? slicing through the fronds, weaving orange and black tiger stripes." Mountain bandits, sugar warlords, Peace Corps volunteers, dignitaries, and revolutionaries all jostle beneath "mango-colored" skies in this riveting epic of loss and transformation, but it is a masterful and delicate choreography.

 Enjoy the read! 

 .

Enrico