The Dry Well

The Dry Well When retired Englishman Peter Rawlins agrees to help an old acquaintance investigate a forgotten wartime file, he expects little more than stories about Yamashita gold and Japanese occupation myths buried deep in the hills of Bohol. Instead, he uncovers something far more dangerous. What begins with an abandoned pre-war tunnel near Jagna slowly exposes a hidden network of wartime land transfers, vanished families, political alliances and mineral surveys stretching back to the final years of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. As foreign investors descend on the province chasing rare earth deposits worth billions, old Manila families, government officials and corporate interests become increasingly desperate to keep the past buried. But history refuses to stay silent forever. Linked to mysterious British T-Force intelligence files, wartime collaboration records and a deadly Senate shooting in Manila, Peter and his companions find themselves trapped between modern political power and secrets preserved since 1945. In the Philippines, people survive however they can. And some ownership never truly changes. The Dry Well is a tense political mystery set against the heat, storms and shifting loyalties of modern Bohol — where the greatest treasure was never gold, but control.