Tiger Orchids on Mount Mayon

Tiger Orchids on Mount Mayon #1

by Paulino Lim Jr.

At the dramatic conclusion of the prize-winning short story "Homecoming," included in the collection Passion Summer (New Day, 1988), the narrator exclaims: "Something must have pierced his mind and transfixed his vision, something in the midnight incident at the airport he had forgotten after a decade of absence, that struck him. I hope that it will free him from nostalgia and bring him closer to the reality of his homeland. For his sake, I hope it does, because that is the only way he can come home again. Tiger Orchds, the first work of a projected trilogy, represents the author's imaginative coming home to the country's political reality. Tiger Orchids tells a love story against the backdrop of an erupting Mayon Volcano. James Collins, who manages a coconut oil-processing company in Legazpi, is having an affair with his beautiful secretary Zenaida. His wife Marjorie wants to return to California. His assistant Mark Ledesma, a U.P. activist in the 70's just before martial law, is being pressured by communists to take a more active role in the party. The parish priest Father Pelagio confronts social ills with the dilemma of pacificism and liberation theology. Violence explodes on the night Mayon unleashes it fury.

96 pages

First published January 1, 1990