The Builder

As he ends his Physics class one morning, Professor Felix Acuña is jolted into the daylight violence across the street in the university town of Dumaguete and his life begins to unreel with detective purpose. But dare he put his own life to a standstill when he must build a house while awaiting the birth of his firstborn? While he prods his students to speed up their work, he must also take on responsibility for the school administrator's middling son. Now he must run after an enigmatic outlaw and two purloined documents in forging a compelling punishment to an unsettling domestic crime. Readers will welcome this gripping novel by Edith L. Tiempo, her most recent after being named National Artist for Literature. The Builder assembles a cast of indomitable characters, replete with wit, cleverness, and most amazingly, with sudden unexpected depths. Here is a work which abounds with the clear surprises of inversion and moral ambiguity, where the consummate artist meditates on the human leaning for rootedness - as in life's rooms, the seekers come and go, ripening into wisdom and discovering that time is the one firmament building the house of conviction and faith, slaking our thirst for truth.