But Lito has the deck stacked against him. Not only is he a poor fisherman, he also has a mysterious inherited disease that caused him to be born without a left pectoral muscle, just as his father had a missing thigh muscle. He wasn't short, but he certainly wasn't tall either, and he was as black as the other boys who worked in the sea. But Lito was more handsome and less scarred than many of them, and he cut his hair much shorter. . . . Avoiding disco hair was no bad thing.
Garland is perpetually in search of the Philippines.
He explores the city, the countryside, the present, the past, always finding poverty and a rigid caste structure. When Rosa's parents discover that she loves Lito, they send her across the Sierra Madre mountains to Manila. Years later, married to another man and mother to two children, Rosa's betrayal of Lito and of herself still haunts her. Cente's story is also about loyalty and social injustice. Totoy's favorite game is to leap onto Cente's back from hiding places overhead.