The Mango Tree Legacy — How Three Stories Became One
When I wrote Under the Mango Tree, I wasn’t setting out to write a trilogy. I was writing a story.
It was set in Bohol, a place I know well, and like many of my stories it grew from a fairly simple idea: what happens when something from the past refuses to remain buried?
By the time I reached the end, the story was complete. Or at least I thought it was.
But some stories have an inconvenient habit of refusing to end.
The characters remained with me, as did the mango tree itself. There were unanswered questions, memories that had not quite been laid to rest, and consequences that could reach far beyond the people who had first experienced them.
That became The Shade of the Mango Tree, taking the story forward and showing how events from one generation can continue to affect another.
And then came The Second Dig.
By then I realised that what had begun as one novel had become something larger. The three books were separate stories, but together they told one continuing story of family, memory, secrets and discoveries stretching across generations.
That is why I decided to bring all three novels together in one volume:
The Complete Mango Tree Trilogy
The collected edition contains Under the Mango Tree, The Shade of the Mango Tree and The Second Dig. The original novels remain intact, but the collected edition also includes The Years Between, a new section linking the first story with the events that follow.
For me, the mango tree has become more than simply a location in the books. It stands over the lives of the people around it while generations come and go, memories fade and old secrets wait beneath the ground.
And sometimes somebody starts digging.
The Mango Tree Legacy — coming soon to the Independent Authors’ Library.