Before the Rain
A Memoir of Love & Revolution
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
“Takes us to the exotic and pillaged places of the earth . . . and into the hearts of two passionate, revolutionary women who dared to love and lose.” —Carole DeSanti, author of The Unruly Passions of Eugénie R
In a voice haunting and filled with longing, Before the Rain tells the story of love unexpected, its fragile bounds and subtle perils. As a newspaper editor in the ’80s, Luisita Torregrosa lived her career. Enter Elizabeth, a striking, reserved, and elusive writer with whom Torregrosa falls deeply in love. Their story—irresistible romance, overlapping ambitions, and fragile union—unfolds as the narrative shifts to the Philippines and the fall of Ferdinand Marcos. There, on that beautiful, troubled island, the couple creates a world of their own, while covering political chaos and bloody upheavals. What was effortless abroad becomes less idyllic when they return to the United States, and their ending becomes as surprising and revealing as their beginning. Torregrosa captures the way love transforms those who experience it for an unforgettable, but often too brief, time. This book is distinguished not only by its strong, unique, and conflicted heroines, but also by Torregrosa’s lyrical portrait of the Philippines and the even more exotic heart of intimacy.
“Spare, precise and soulful, Before the Rain is an epic travelogue of the heart. It has the urgency of a front page news story, but then, no matter what is happening in the world, love is always revolutionary when it happens to you.” —Bob Morris, author of Assisted Loving
“As Torregrosa fashions in her oblique and beautiful fashion, the two women could never really acknowledge their love publicly, underscoring a sad truth to this memorable work.” —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A friendship between two journalists covering the Philippines Revolution of 1986 deepens into a passionate, far-flung love affair in this serenely capable work by Lopez Torregrosa (The Noise of Infinite Longing). The two women were first colleagues at a Manhattan newspaper office: the Puerto Rico born author was an editor at the New York Times, a refugee from a "dead relationship" in the suburbs who moved to her friend Tim's house in a "seedy" neighborhood of the city; while Elizabeth (then known as Blake) was the newbie reporter in the office, sharp, diffident, a loner, and separating from her husband. A position for South Asia correspondent opened up, and Elizabeth took it, just as the presidential election campaign of Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino heated up. Tentatively the two writers grew closer over correspondence; the author arrived for a four-week vacation in Manila, sealing her resolve to leave her job at the newspaper, move to Manila to be with Elizabeth, and try to write a book, as Elizabeth has encouraged her. Indeed, over seven years amid tumultuous travels, journalistic assignments, and housekeeping from New York to Tokyo, their relationship charged their writerly ambition with passionate purpose, yet the long separations eventually took a lonely toll. Moreover, as Lopez Torregrosa fashions in her oblique and beautiful fashion, the two women could never really acknowledge their love publicly, underscoring a sad truth to this memorable work.
