A Tooth in My Popsicle: And Other Ebullient Essays on Becoming Filipino

What happens when an award-winning American journalist leaves California for the southern Philippines to begin again?

After losing his longtime job at the Los Angeles Times and growing weary of rising costs and life in the United States, David Haldane and his Filipino wife, Ivy, make a radical choice: leave America behind and build a new life in Mindanao, the place she once called home.

What follows is funny, moving, bewildering, and unforgettable.

In these lively personal essays, Haldane writes about culture shock, family, faith, food, marriage, immigration, construction disasters, tropical setbacks, island beauty, and the daily surprises of becoming part of a world that is at once foreign and deeply welcoming. Along the way, he and Ivy renew their vows on Siargao Island, build a dream home overlooking the sea, navigate illness, bureaucracy, power outages, parenthood, and the emotional complexity of starting over in another country.

Warm, witty, and deeply human, A Tooth in My Popsicle is a memoir-in-essays about love, reinvention, cross-cultural marriage, and what it means to find home in an unexpected place.

Perfect for readers who enjoy travel memoirs, expat stories, cultural essays, and humorous nonfiction about rebuilding a life abroad.