The Storm We Made: A Novel

Cecily Alcantara is the protagonist of The Storm We Made and one of the novel’s four main point-of-view characters. Cecily is introduced as the mother of three children and the wife of a government official. Much of her story is related in flashbacks, which take place from 1934 to 1938 and cover her relationship with Shigeru Fujiwara, a Japanese general who is leading the empire’s Malayan campaign.

Through the flashbacks, the novel reveals that Cecily resents her domestic life as well as the racist treatment of Malayans by the British. Her husband Gordon’s position grants Cecily access to sensitive information about the British colony’s development, which she uses when she becomes Fujiwara’s informant. She leverages Gordon’s love of social climbing to her advantage despite hating his status-seeking behavior and the parties and dinners she must attend.

Cecily is a complex character, and her past decisions haunt—and in some ways catalyze—the events that take place in the novel’s present day of 1945. Her life is full of contradictions: She is a dedicated wife and mother, but she works as a spy and has an affair with her handler. She dislikes the social-climbing Mrs. Yap but befriends her when she changes her identity to Lina and becomes Fujiwara’s wife.