Your Reading World

A Gift of Contentment

(Available at Amazon.com)

Allie Mendez, a forty-something Filipino nurse who lives in Chicago is awaken in the middle of the night by a phone call from home. The news she gets will send her on a journey to explore the painful past she escaped decades ago.

Although pampered and sheltered by her parents who are members of the elite of Santa Cruz, it is Tola the servant who pays her most attention and whom Allie loves most. However, she grows up hearing insinuations from the people of Santa Cruz that make her feel anxious, distrustful, and different from other people.

In her late teens, Allie meets Gerry while taking private art classes. Love grows between them. Allie goes to Manila for her studies and while there, she meets Art, whom she initially distrusts. But Art is charming and persistent and after a while, they begin a love affair. She breaks up with Gerry. Gerry is crushed. She later finds out that Art is a married man. She keeps all these love relationships secret from her parents, friends, and relations.

Her work of tending to patients consumes her during the day, but when night comes, feelings of guilt, indignity, sinfulness, and fear haunt her. As she tries to resolve these feelings and the perceived allusions, she entangles herself in more difficulties rather than solutions. Will she ever find respite and answers to her problems? Will the twists and turns in her saga of life lead her to peace and contentment?