One Hundred Candles
by Doreen Gandy Wiley
"If I closed my eyes...I could see the hundred candles on the Baguio pine on Peņafrancia Street. I would carry that memory with me the rest of my life, as surely as I carried it to light the blackest days of early 1945" -- Doreen Gandy Wiley
One Hundred Candles is Doreen Gandy Wiley's autobiography of her childhood years in Manilla during the Japanese occupation. It's the story of a family in crisis, going from rich to poor, and how their commitment to one another and their cohesiveness carried them through the war years.
Young Doreen turned inward, allowing diary writing to absorb her numbness from the war and the loss of her first love, a soldier named Harry who died in the war.
The title, One Hundred Candles, comes from the memories of her new step-father Bert surprising them on their first Christmas with a Christmas tree lit with one hundred burning candles in 1935. It is the beginning of the book, before the family's home is bombed and burned, and servants are lost.
A rich and powerful read, filled with a poet's prose.
Doreen Gandy Wiley is the author of five books of poetry, and the memoir, Fires of Survival (Strawberry Hill Press, 1995), which won the National League of American Pen Women Award for best historical novel in 1996.
Available from the publisher on line at www.buybooksontheweb.com or Amazon.com
One Hundred Candles
Doreen Gandy Wiley
Paper. $14.95. #0-7414-0858-9
Infinity Publishing, 519 W. Lancaster Ave., Haverford PA 19041-1413
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