Foreigners: A Philippine Satire

by Ken Fuller

There's a lot happening in the Philippine province of San Andres. English property developer Adrian Morton is promoting US retail giant SaverBarn, and US Navy veteran Sandy Booth also seems to have had a past relationship with the company, raising suspicions with Frank Corrigan, an Irish socialist sympathetic to the cause of Filipino nationalism. Drew Gorman, a tightfisted farmer from Ohio, is being blackmailed over an illicit liason. Australian lone yachtsman Pete O'Rourke has acquired a supply of explosives and a large amount of US currency. Philippine military intelligence officer Capt. Efren Miraflores is assigned to track down the explosives.Self-published poet Norman Bayliss has a persecution complex, while his friend Clive Baker, perhaps the most unpopular foreigner since the Japanese occupation, has persuaded Billy Lee, the mayor of San Andres City, that he's qualified to school the city's ill-discipline tricycle drivers in road traffic law. The mayor, however, is anxious to prevent the arrival of SaverBarn, and sees a use for Baker, while his mayoral predecessor Aristotle Yu, now lawyer for the litigious Bayliss, is leading a joint-venture project.And then, of course, there's former Hell's Angel Preacher McCandless, who now spends his time trying to win the masses to the Wrath of God church.The major strands come together as the largely dysfunctional expats stumble to the finale in the Plaza Bonifacio, where Mayor Lee's SaverBarn "consultation meeting" coincides with a tricycle drivers' strike and demonstration demanding Baker's removal, the attempted contract killing of Drew Gorman arranged by his live-in lover, and the final appearance of O'Rourke's explosives.

424 pages, Paperback

Published July 14, 2019