Gina Apostol’s elliptical, incandescent new novel pieces together a century and a half of Philippine history through the story of a single family over generations of colonization, war and catastrophe.

Rosario Delgado, a Filipina novelist in New York City, learns of the death of her mother in the Philippines, but puts off her return to the country by burying herself in an investigation of her family’s history-and her mother’s supposed inheritance, La Tercera, a place that may or may not exist. As Rosario tries to understand her mother’s past and her own, she documents generations of family bequests and detritus, from maps of uncertain purpose and the rusted remains of chicken coops to family notebooks and news clippings. She grapples, too, with less tangible legacies: the lasting effects of fifty years of American rule and repression; the crimes of the Marcos dictatorship in post-independence; Filipino puns and jibes that play off of shifting overlays of language (English, Tagalog, Waray, Spanish); and the sensibilities of generations of Delgados, a blend of despair and pride, venom and humor- the wit of the hunted.

Each question Rosario asks seems to lead to more questions, and each life she explores opens onto a multitude of other lives. But as the search for La Tercera becomes increasingly labyrinthine, Rosario’s mother emerges in all her dizzying complexity-victor and victim, rebel and traitor, the one who abandons and the one who loves. Meanwhile, another narrative takes shape, made up of fragments from the country’s erased history of exploitation and slaughter at the hands of American occupying forces.

What a catastrophe to be a Filipino, one character observes. And yet, in the words of another, So much was lacking in the world that was not the Philippines. Both epic and deeply personal, La Tercera is Gina Apostol’s most ambitious, encompassing, and beguiling novel yet-a story about the impossibility of capturing the truth of the past, and the terrible cost to a family, or a country, that fails to try.