The Firewalkers

by Erwin E. Castillo

Set in 1913, The Firewalkers follows police sergeant Gabriel Diego in the hard-bitten mountain town of Lakambaga, Cavite. Silver-spurred Americans and their new rule of law bristle against the fading glory of Gabriel Diego’s blood uncles, old generals spurned by Emilio Aguinaldo during the Philippine-American War. Meanwhile, a monster leaves behind mangled corpses of children as the cowboy Apache Kid searches the town for the remote memories of something else more magical.

Following this startling work of historical fiction made of magic and woodsmoke, Erwin E. Castillo finishes with “The Watch of La Diane,” a seductive companion story that follows two young lovers traveling across 1970s America. In a new preface for this edition, Castillo writes, “events of our interesting times, public as well as precious, were grist for these intertwined narratives that hoped to confront the present with amuletic relics of an invented past.”

Genres: Fiction

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Born on 29 September 1944, Erwin E. Castillo first studied in public schools, then attended U.P., and, on a U.S. State department scholarship, the University of Iowa in Iowa City. He is now in semi-retirement after spending almost 40 years in professional communications, although he continues to sit on the board of the companies he founded. He also actively consults with personal clients in business, sports and politics.

Erwin E. Castillo first began publishing stories, and later, poems in the old Philippines Free Press when he was literary editor of the Collegian. Since then, his works have been published and anthologized here, in Europe and in the United States. he has won a few prizes such as the Free Press, Palanca, Leader, Tagayan, and the ASEAN, which was the forerunner of the SEAWrite Prize.

Reviews

[IdrisM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pulp pacing. Earthy prose. You get the sense Castillo must have read Blood Meridian at some point. Fun read, but very macho. Grand total of two named women, and one of them is an Indian princess stereotype kept as a sex slave the main character fucks ... like okay.

[Annabelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simon Stack was right. This is a good book. A bit on the macho side, though. Even the front blurb by Nick Joaquin sounds macho, and the story is dominated by men. I once chucked a book in mid-read, something I rarely do, because I found it too much the man's book. But this has so much more heart, history, and story to it than Catch-22!

* There is a second, much shorter story in the book, The Watch of La Diane. Is it prose meant to be read as poetry? It is readable, but undecipherable.

[Prex Ybasco · Rating 2 out of 5]

Several thoughts while reading this:
*I might not have been equipped enough to understand this 'high literature' or
*The plot of the first story is something I can truly appreciate; the ending was a masterpiece; BUT HELL, how the work was littered with descriptive phrases seemingly lifted from classic novels was off-putting.
*The second story was an attempt on stream of consciousness.
*It would have been better if I hadn't tried finishing the book.

[nadine · Rating 2 out of 5]

im so cooked dawg wdym i have to analyze this novel for class U COULD HOLD A GUN TO MY HEAD AND I STILL COULDNT TELL U WHAT TF HAPPENED IN THIS BOOK

my beef w this book:
- there r Too Many Ways to refer to each and every character that are Not Explained Well
- i feel like im missing A LOT of context (but ok sure my fault for not knowing ig esp considering im filipino)
- what da fak . there r Two (2) named women in the entire novel and both of them have no actual relevance to the plot, have sex scenes, and are OBJECTIFIED IN EVERY SCENE THEYRE IN istg this book cant have a woman in the scene without going "she breasted boobily"

redeeming qualities:
- premise is SO JNTERESTING i just wish i understood the novel more :(

[Decolonize D Native · Rating 1 out of 5]

skip the second story

[Rexy]

Read this for academic purposes.

-Reminiscent of a fairytale and serves as counter-memory against American discourse
-Narrated American atrocities
-Contains elements of magic and lore

[renzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

something terrible is brewing. children are dying horribly while the traitor scouts and colluding constabularies suspend due process to crack down on bandits, who turn out to be old heroes of the bourgeois revolution, their moments of glory stolen by their defeat to the americans, declare that something must be done about this. the protagonist does his job dutifully not for service but for the hope of honor, reclaiming the Honor he fumbled so dishonorably with his capitulation in the war, and with this he takes orders from an american army major with zeal, but he knows he has to Act and look forwards in the direction of the old war flags, the three K's high in the wind.

very beautiful prose, unlike anything ive read (except for wilfredo nolledo though, his was even more special but this review is not about him). one thing the two authors have in common though aside from their lyrical command of english is their proclivity to writing "She Breasted Her Breasts Boobily" for every female character they wrote, as one other review on here puts it. there are only two named female characters here, one is described as a whore and the other one is married but is implied to be an object of masturbatory desire by the protagonist (yes page 98 exploding galaxies 1st edition)..it had a good ending

i could say the same for the watch of la diane which i think should have been separate from the firewalkers but whatever. Good train-of-though kind of writing that makes me go woah... you can call a really long prose poem a novel... total 4/5

[Leilani · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few characters here are too vile, like that Apache Kid, who is not a Filipino (and I don’t want this to be an issue about race, but I believe his racial group deserves a better representation, like give him an antithesis from the same race or get him out of the narrative! *sighs*). I said “a few,” but he and the anonymous (see, no spoilers!) murderer stood out. The main character, Gabriel Diego, is somewhat tolerable (unless I missed out some parts that would make me retrieve this after a reread). The others are not even though I am used to reading novels or stories with macho characters whose ways and perspectives take up the narrative. Other reviews have commented how rife machismo is in this novel, so I rather not expound on that anymore.

[Axel]

the firewalkers: started mar 2023 and finished sometime that year

the watch of la diane: mar 20-22, 2026

tbh was kinda confusing to read...

[Gabriela Francisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Castillo’s pen sings, his verse-like sentences conjuring the scent of burnt human fat dripping on cooked potatoes; evoking the spectacle of a time when the Americans sought to bring us Filipinos to heel, benevolence yet to come and violence dispersed in the name of controlling rebellion. This is no romantic traipsing through memory, but a bloody resurrection of things nearly forgotten: of aging heroes reduced to petty bureaucrats doing the American’s dirty work, disguised as public service; of the slow moral decay of the greedy generation that emerged after heroes, and “the conflagration they sparked but could not in the end command.”

Read the rest of the review at https://exlibrisphilippines.com/2025/...

[Kyle Bartolabac · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final section alone is worth the price of admission: grand, striking, cathartic.

The inclusion of The Watch of La Diane elevates this edition of the book to near-perfect status.