Rosario, a Filipina novelist in New York City, has just learned of her mother''s death in the Philippines. Instead of rushing home, she puts off her return by embarking on a remote investigation into her family''s history and her mother''s supposed inheritance, a place called La Tercera, which may or may not exist. Rosario catalogs generations of Delgado family bequests and detritus: maps of uncertain purpose, rusted chicken coops, a secret journal, the words to songs sung at the family home during visits from Imelda Marcos. Each life Rosario explores opens onto an array of other lives and raises a multitude of new questions. But as the search for La Tercera becomes increasingly labyrinthine, Rosario''s mother and the entire Delgado family emerge in all their dizzying complexity: traitors and heroes, reactionaries and revolutionaries. Meanwhile, another narrative takes shape - of the country''s erased history of exploitation and slaughter at the hands of American occupying forces. La Tercera is Gina Apostol''s most ambitious, personal, and encompassing novel: a story about what seems impossible - capturing the truth of the past and the terrible cost to a family, or a country, that fails to try.
