Dead Season

the long version

Alan Berlow's investigation of the seemingly senseless killing of a sugarcane worker and his family in the small Philippine town of Himamaylan uncovers the connections between a series of puzzling deaths: the assassination of the town's most powerful landowner, the shooting of a member of the military's elite corps, and the disappearance of a suspected military informer. In establishing the surprising links between these events, Berlow captures the dynamics of an entire culture: one mired in atavistic rules and the tangled legacy of colonialism. Dead Season unfolds with a brooding inevitability, shedding light on a society of intricate collusions and turbulent cycles of retribution and recrimination. It is a book of stunning beauty and insight.