The Villa, Once Beloved

SOME LEGACIES ARE BEST LEFT BURIED . . .

A dark history is unearthed amid crumbling façades in Lambda Literary fellow Victor Manibo’s gothic tale of family, homecoming, and postcolonial vengeance . . .

Villa Sepulveda is a storied relic of the Philippines’ past: a Spanish colonial manor, its moldering stonework filled with centuries-old heirlooms, nestled in a remote coconut plantation. When their patriarch dies mysteriously, his far-flung family returns to their ancestral home. Filipino-American student Adrian Sepulveda invites his college girlfriend, Sophie, a transracial adoptee who knows little about her own Filipino heritage, to the funeral of a man who was entwined with the history of the country itself.

As the Sepulvedas clash viciously amid grief, confusion, and rumors about a mysterious curse, Sophie soon learns that there is more to the family than a grand tradition of political and entrepreneurial success. When a landslide traps them all in the villa, secrets begin to emerge, revealing sins both intimately personal and unthinkably public.

Sifting through fact, folklore, and fiction, Sophie finds herself at the center of a reckoning. As a series of ill omens befall the villa, Sophie must decide whom to trust—and whom to flee—before the family’s true legacy comes to take its revenge . . .