Books like My Faraway Home by Mary McKay Maynard

When Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor and attacked the Philippines in 1941, eight‑year‑old Mary McKay Maynard, her parents, and other American families fled to Mindanao’s jungles, thinking they would be rescued quickly. The wait lasted two years. Throughout that time the refugees endured typhoons, fires, and poisonous cobras while surviving on limited canned food and trading with Filipino villagers who kept their shelter secret. Mary’s journal records intimate details of their ingenuity—making shoes from rubber tires, soap from pig fat, and recreating a semblance of normal life with Fourth of July feasts, card games, and a pet goldfish. The memoir also offers a quiet portrait of Mary’s evolving perceptions of her family’s strained relationships, the island’s social politics, and the heavy reality of sexual assault. In part, it recounts the family’s submarine escape avoiding enemy torpedoes and a brother’s survival in a prison camp and the bombing of Manila.

First publish date: 2001