Crossings: Portraits of a Revolutionary opens with the carefree days of Pena's youth and ends with samples of his translation of some of the best of world literature into Filipino or English. In between, the reader enters a world of encoded communications, a network of underground couriers, romantic interludes, a chase through the forest with enemy soldiers at his heels. There is also a glimpse into an exile's everyday life in China during the Cultural Revolution. This book of remembering is an important contribution to the literature of protest. In a country starved for real heroes, Pena, who turned his back on what could have been a lucrative career, heeded the call to fight a dictatorship and quietly worked for the Revolution. When he surfaced and before he died in a freak accident in November 2018, he devoted his last 26 years of life to molding a new generation of geologists and advocating Nature conservation through geo-parks in Bohol and the Masungi Reserve in Tanay, Rizal.

1. Memoir (English).