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When the Elephants Dance
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In the waning days of World War II, as the Japanese and U.S. forces battle to possess the Philippine Islands, the Karangalan family hides with their neighbors in a cramped cellar, where they glean hope from the family stories and folktales they tell each other. These stories of love, survival, and family blend the supernatural with the rich, little known history of the Philippines, the centuries of Spanish colonization, the power of the Catholic church, and the colorful worlds of the Spanish, Mestizo, and Filipino cultures.
As the villagers tell their stories in the darkened cellar below, Holthe masterfully weaves in the stories of three brave Filipinos--a teenage brother and sister and a guerilla fighter--as they become caught in the battle against the vicious Japanese forces above ground.
Inspired by her father's firsthand accounts of this period, Tess Uriza Holthe brings to magical and terrifying life a story of the hope and courage needed to survive in wartime.
As the villagers tell their stories in the darkened cellar below, Holthe masterfully weaves in the stories of three brave Filipinos--a teenage brother and sister and a guerilla fighter--as they become caught in the battle against the vicious Japanese forces above ground.
Inspired by her father's firsthand accounts of this period, Tess Uriza Holthe brings to magical and terrifying life a story of the hope and courage needed to survive in wartime.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,2002
This edition
- Format
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384 pages, Paperback
- Published
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June 24, 2003 by Penguin Books
- ISBN
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9780142002889
- ASIN
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0142002887
- Language
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English
About the author
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TESS URIZA HOLTHE is the author of the critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling When the Elephants Dance. She grew up on a Filipino-American family in San Francisco. When the Elephants Dance is inspired, in part, by the experiences of her father, who was a young boy in the Philippines during World War II.
Tess Uriza's second book, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes, was a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of 2007 and an ALA Notable Book of 2007.
In a series of linked stories, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes takes readers onto the 5:45 train to Cannes, linking northern Italy with the French Riviera while running like a thread through lives that touch one another in unexpected and often secret ways: Chazz, the heir to a great fortune; GianCarlo, a kindhearted young Italian thief; Anais, who feels the insults of age; and Sophie, a talented young photographer. At the center we find beautiful, bereaved Claudette, wife of the doomed Chazz, making the journey to Cannes, where she, like all the others, remembers her past and draws from it irresolvable feelings of strength and fragility, meaning and emptiness, permanence and loss.
In these stories, Tess Uriza Holthe peers deeply into the inner lives of these women and men. Sad and lovely, often at the same time, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes takes us to places where we are happy to linger, in the world and in the human heart.
Author photo copyright: Ross Pelton
Tess Uriza's second book, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes, was a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of 2007 and an ALA Notable Book of 2007.
In a series of linked stories, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes takes readers onto the 5:45 train to Cannes, linking northern Italy with the French Riviera while running like a thread through lives that touch one another in unexpected and often secret ways: Chazz, the heir to a great fortune; GianCarlo, a kindhearted young Italian thief; Anais, who feels the insults of age; and Sophie, a talented young photographer. At the center we find beautiful, bereaved Claudette, wife of the doomed Chazz, making the journey to Cannes, where she, like all the others, remembers her past and draws from it irresolvable feelings of strength and fragility, meaning and emptiness, permanence and loss.
In these stories, Tess Uriza Holthe peers deeply into the inner lives of these women and men. Sad and lovely, often at the same time, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes takes us to places where we are happy to linger, in the world and in the human heart.
Author photo copyright: Ross Pelton
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