An excellent, well-told primer on Hawaiian history.
Bill Fernandez’s novel of Hawaii deals with the struggle to find a humane belief system.
We open with a kind of origin story. Centuries ago, life on what would become Hawaii was truly Edenic. Everyone got along amicably, and simple goodness reigned under Io, their god of peace and equality. Then came Paoa, a high priest from Tahiti who declared that the Tahitian gods, most notably Ku, the war god, would be in charge. Now the ethos would be “kapu,” royal edicts where the slightest misstep could get one killed. And of course there would be chiefs and high priests—and human sacrifice. Fast-forward to the early 19th century. Kalani Tana is a chief, a title and status bestowed upon him for his valor fighting alongside the great Kamehameha, a renowned war chief who united all of the Hawaiian Islands. Spiritual seeking is in the air: There has to be something better than this insane cruelty. Perhaps it is Confucianism? Christianity? Kaahumanu, the late Kamehameha’s favorite wife; Hewahewa, the high priest; and others decide that the old gods must go. Even the feckless young king, Liholiho, is reluctantly on board. Keaoua, the priest of Ku, and cousin of Liholiho, leads an ill-fated rebellion. Meanwhile, Kalani simply wants to return to the village where he is chief and help them prosper again. He is also wracked with guilt over his teenage daughter, Lehua, because he was an absent father to her, and now she rejects him and leads a wild life. He wants to regain her love, but first he must find her. Ultimately, missionaries from New England arrive.
Author Fernandez tells a good story, and Kalani is an admirable hero, great in hand-to-hand combat but also complex and thoughtful. (We do have a rather cartoonish villain, Kalani’s nemesis, the arrogant Kamuela; other villains are usually riffraff from the outside.) The book opens with a bang—an exciting sea battle with Malay pirates in which, as always, Kalani distinguishes himself as a fighter and a leader. We are reminded that he is well traveled. He has even lived in Boston and speaks English well. Another important character is wise Kaahumanu, the widowed wife who becomes regent when Liholiho ascends the throne. She is probably the most forward looking of the Natives and had almost persuaded the dying Kamehameha to abolish kapu. Hawaii is hardly isolated, of course. Trading ships, whaling ships, and others are common visitors and definitely a mixed blessing. The islanders need the trade, but the ships bring all sorts of vices (and diseases), and, even allowing for the open sexual mores of the islanders, the women’s throwing themselves at the sailors in exchange for trinkets is cause for alarm, which is where the story of Lehua gets complicated: The concept of “aloha” always included free love, but where is the line between aloha and prostitution? (Needless to say, the sight of all these naked women paddling out to their ship gives the missionary wives the fantods!) These and other issues must be wrestled with. The author is a Hawaiian Native who came home after his retirement from being a judge in California. His latest book is illustrated with photographs and sketches by Judith Fernandez and maps.
An excellent, well-told primer on Hawaiian history.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63944-358-1
Page Count: 318
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
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