Talking to the Moon

Nurse Belen Lalaban and her letter-carrier husband, Jory, came to America from the Philippines to escape, among other things, their class-crossed origins (she was a rich debutante, he a poor seminarian). In 1999, the couple are just three years away from paying off the 30-year mortgage on their Los Angeles home when Jory is shot by a white supremacist. Alumit entwines the inner lives and memories of Jory; Belen; and their American-born, 30-year-old son Emerson, as the family copes with hospital life, media attention and their disintegrating relationships with religion and each other. None can speak frankly, but each finds comfort in apostrophe; Jory talks to the moon, Belen to the Virgin Mary, and Emerson to the ghost of his dead brother, Jory Jr. ("Jun-Jun"). Meanwhile Michael Zhang, a Taiwanese flight attendant who had previously dumped Emerson, reconsiders when he sees Emerson on TV. Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift made a mark in queer and Filipino fiction, but the whimsy of the magical realism here cloys quickly, and the flashback structure, which ping-pongs between a colorful Luzon Island past and a grim future, becomes rote. Though Alumit keeps the historically rich story moving, the characters end up thin. (Feb.)