Luisita López Torregrosa (The Noise of Infinite Longing) is a New York newspaper editor when Elizabeth comes aboard as a new reporter in the 1980s. Her quiet, self-contained, slightly mysterious air draws Luisita's attention. When Elizabeth lands a sought-after position as foreign correspondent, she builds a home for herself in Manila, Luisita joins her there, and the two women throw themselves hesitatingly and then wholeheartedly into a passionate affair against the backdrop of the fall of Ferdinand Marcos.
As a love story, Before the Rain is spellbinding and heartwrenching, but Torregrosa's highest feat is perhaps one of poetry. Her tone is haunting, lyrical and sensuous. Readers will feel the equatorial heat of the Philippines and the beat of the Manila Blues, smell the mangoes and squatters' camps, taste the margaritas and then feel the biting cold of New York winters as the story returns to the United States.
Before the Rain is a memoir of revolution as well as love: the beauty, upheaval and political turmoil of the Philippines are handled sensitively and lovingly. Besides Manila, Luisita and Elizabeth live and travel in New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Miami, Rio and Washington, D.C.--each of these places leaves its mark. But their relationship is always the book's main focus. The two women travel, move, work various jobs (some rewarding, some soul-draining); throughout, their ardor has a momentum all its own. Even in its painful finale, that love is this book's most lovely evocation. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at Pages of Julia