Ang naturalesa kang kahoy, pilosopiya kang kahoy... The nature of a tree is its philosophy: first seed and then root and then trunk and then branch and then leaf and then flower and then fruit and then seed and then root again... and then without an ending. Even if we cut it.

Four generations of women named after trees refuse to be cut down: Banaba, Narra, Pili and Dao. In a Philippine ritual of retrieval, Lola Narra tries to heal her granddaughter Dao who was paralysed in an accident that killed her father.

They live in Canberra, far from the healing trees of their first home in the village of Ilawod where the story began. But between the Philippines and Australia, the land knows, the trees know, as do these hardwood women: their colonial inheritance is wound on wound on wound-lúgad sa lúgad sa lúgad.

They tell stories to hide, evade, or make truth bearable. But trees remember. They do not lie. And knowing is resistance.