Mirror of My Past

About the Book

MIRROR OF MY PAST is a reflection of the author looking back at her life growing up in a Third World country like the Philippines, what it was like and how she is now able to see many of the events of her growing up quite differently with more experience in life. Sometimes emotional but always brutally honest, she lovingly explores the complex Asian mother-daughter relationship and provides deep insight into the events that had affected her so much as she was growing up. She tells of her struggles within her own family to make her wishes known to realize her dreams of coming to America. And how prejudices among her own relatives and in her own neighborhood had a profound affect on her childhood. How she had often fantasized of leaving the Philippines and going to America to make a better life for herself and her family, perhaps in part, to fulfill the lifelong wish of her grandfather, who had fought along side American troops during World War II. And how he, himself, had filled her with many stories About America and about Americans before she had even reached school age. As a result, she tells of the heartbreaking episodes of growing up poor with her close-net family and, eventually, how a change in environment can sometimes create a whole new outlook on life and the lives of everyone close to her. MIRROR OF MY LIFE reflects on her transformation as Melba finally succeeds gambling with her life, benumbed with the attitude "Bahala na" (Come what may) getting to America to realize her dreams. Finding it much different than she had ever imagined, Melba is grateful and thankful for fortunately finding a loving and caring older man and realizes how much she has changed, herself, by the experience. Once regarded as a tremendous obligation to her family, Melba is now looked upon as the grande dame of her family and is greatly depended upon. MIRROR OF MY PAST explains how that came to be.(175 pages, photos, endnotes, HB & PB editions)

About the Author

Lonnie R. Speer is an author and historian with dozens of newspaper and magazine articles and three books to his credit – A Brief History of Meacham Park (St. Louis, MO: pvt. pub., 1995), Portals to Hell, The Military Prisons of the Civil War (Stackpole Books, HB, 410 pp., 1997), and War of Vengeance, Acts of Retaliation Against Civil War POWs (Stackpole Books, HB, 190 pp., 2002). The two latter were chosen as Alternate Choices for the History Book Club.