Abstract:
One hundred Candles describes the defining decade of Doreen Gandy Wiley’s years in the Philippines. Of Spanish/English parents, Doreen’s seventh through seventeenth years are chal-lenged by the emotional upheavals of youth—divorce of her parents, abandonment in boarding school, and the trauma of Japanese Occupation during WWII. Trapped for weeks in their hand-dug, backyard trench, One Hundred Candles gives a firsthand account of the fiery holocaust that characterized culmination of Japanese rule. Spiced with both humor and emotion, seasoned by her command of poetry, the memoir celebrates the implacable bond that accrues to a family under fire.