Wilfredo Garrido

Outside the Walls of Intramuros Wilfredo Garrido

A work of historical fiction covering America's colonial war in the Philippines at the turn of the century. The Spanish Empire falls. America rises. The Filipinos get a taste of freedom, then quickly lose it to the Americans. The story follows the role of Dr. Joaquin Calderon, a personal doctor of revolutionary chief Emilio Aguinaldo, as he struggles to keep a balance between loyalty to the revolutionary cause and recognition of the Americans as the islands? new colonial master. It also follows the romance between an American soldier and the doctor's daughter, which borders on the comic as they have to overcome cultural barriers and political differences. An epic story of war and adventure, romance and betrayal, filled with dark characters who personify an era of empire-building and strewn with lessons in war politics for the 21st Century. The novel quaintly portrays the irony in the character of the American soldiers who land by the thousands on the shores of Manila Bay. Dispatched to show the flag of an emerging world power, they are mostly farm boys from the cattle ranches and homesteads of the West, or working class men from the grimy factories of the East; coarse, uncouth and uneducated; the sons of the tired, poor and hungry immigrants from Europe. Yet, the same soldiers have at their disposal a modern military machine that has just brought an empire to heel. The author populates his story with historical figures that bring back vividly a forgotten era when America fought a colonial war in the Pacific.