Novel ‘Forgiving Imelda Marcos’ to launch in San Francisco

A new book, Forgiving Imelda Marcos, will be launched Friday, June 16 at 6 to 8 p.m. in a book talk with its author, Nathan Go, at the San Francisco Cultural Center, 814 Mission Street, San Francisco

Trade reviewer Kirkus Reviews lauded the book: “Go’s narrative burns slowly, gracing the novel with an understated yet profound power. A tender meditation on the unseen moments that shape history and the human spirit.”

Forgiving Imelda Marcos is Nathan Go’s first novel. A native of Davao, he was a David T. K. Wong Fellow at the University of East Anglia and a former PEN America Emerging Voices fellow who graduated from the Iowa  Writers’ Workshop and the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Ninth Letter, and The Massachusetts Review. the

The book launch is hosted by NVM & Narita Gonzalez Writers’ Workshop. Go will have a conversation with workshop founder and president Michael Gonzalez and Filipino American writers Peter Bacho and Lisa Suguitan Melnick.

Author Nathan Go. TWITTER

In Forgiving Imelda Marcos, Lito Macaraeg, a Filipino chauffeur who’s spent his life driving for the country’s political elite, suffers a heart attack. In its wake he knows he’s running out of time, despite the quippy optimism of his nurses and doctors. He needs to reach his estranged son—a journalist who lives in the United States, far from his father’s Manila nursing home—so he offers his son a scoop.

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He recounts a journey he took with the former president Corazon Aquino in her later years, driving through the night at her behest. They leave in secret for a destination in Baguio City that she will not disclose. Lito gathers they’re en route to meet Imelda Marcos, the flamboyant wife of the late Philippine dictator who allegedly had Corazon’s politician husband killed.

Lito’s story is filled with twists and turns, asides and digressions. He contemplates what kind of closure Corazon Aquino might be seeking. Slowly, his own past, and his own regrets, come to light. He recalls his neglectful father, who joined a Communist guerilla movement; their life in a mountain encampment led by a charismatic priest; and his personal struggles with poverty and ambition.