Ariston Letrero is a renaissance man: audio producer, insurance salesman, musician, composer, part-time fast food mascot, and an adulterer who quickly and quietly abandons his wife and son, Lucas, at the peak of his mottled career,for a new life in America with his lover Odette.

Years and years later, he sends an email to his son, Lucas, an advertising man who has been brought up on super robot cartoons, Catholic school truisms, and a diet of fast food and loneliness, and who has reconnected with his childhood sweetheart Dedes, who has made a post-annulment life for herself in America.

In the 30-odd years in between is a story that sings songs and anthems of identity, relations, loneliness, and loss, and how they figure in the lives of contemporary Filipinos who are scattered across space and time, but who are also connected and separated at the same time.

Joy is a story of joy—lived forward, backward, sideways, and upside down, in lives and loves that are fragmented, separated, gathered, made virtual, and made real. 

Angelo R. Lacuesta has won numerous awards for his writing, including three Philippine National Book Awards, the Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award, the NVM Gonzalez Award, and several Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards and Philippines Graphic Awards. He has written several books, including five short story collections, two non-fiction books, and a collection of graphic stories. He is Editor-at-Large at Esquire Magazine (Philippines) and is a member of the Board of the Philippine Centre of PEN International (Poets, Essayists, Novelists). He lives and works in Manila