Saturday Snapshot #4

Saturday Snapshot is a non-book related meme hosted by Alyce.

This week we’re off to Hawaii.

My husband and I honeymooned there a couple of years ago. It was the perfect place for a honeymoon – lots of places to stop, relax and do very little, combined with wonderful scenery, history, culture and adventure.

As per usual when I travel, I had a couple of books by Hawaiian authors in my backpack. And by the time we boarded the plane home, I had a few more books with Hawaiian themes in my backpack!

She took a steamer to the Big Island, and before they sighted land, her nostrils burned with vog – volacanic ash and fog. This was the island of seething volcanoes, of moody Pele, volvano goddess, whose boiling exhalations consumed forests, entire villages.

Song of the Exile by Kiana Davenport

Malia was struck once more by the landscape of black lava, where earth’s crust still burped and parted, where its flesh overflowed, still giving birth….Somewhere on this island, mountains shuddered and spewed; somewhere the earth was unstitching, showings its boiling lava veins.

Song of the Exile by Kiana Davenport

Whenever I land on the Big Island, I feel as though I’ve gone back in time. There’s an abandoned look to Hawaii, like it’s been hit by a tsunami. I drive the familiar road, moving past the prickly kiawe trees and black sand beaches, the coconut palms with their wild parrots….I drive the black lava fields that glow with the white rock chalk that teenagers use to declare themselves.

The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings (chapter 12)

P.S. It’s not just teenagers who like to leave their mark 🙂

Song of the Exile | Kiana Davenport | 1999

_{In spellbinding, sensual prose, Song of the Exile follows the fortunes of the Meahuna family–and the odyssey of one resilient man searching for his soul mate after she is torn from his side by the forces of war.}

_{In the last, innocent days before Pearl Harbor, two people meet in Honolulu almost by chance: Keo, a gifted jazz trumpeter native to the islands, and Sunny, a fiercely independent beauty of Hawaiian and Korean heritage. As their love grows, youth and ambition propel them out into a world that is spiraling into madness.}

_{Keo’s music takes him from the back alleys of Honolulu to the hidden jazz clubs of New Orleans–and, ultimately, to the fevered decadence of pre-war Paris, where Sunny joins him, even as the Nazis prepare to march into the doomed city. Caught in the tides of history, the lovers flee separately to the seething chaos of Shanghai, where Sunny searches for the sister she has never known. Captured by the Japanese, Sunny descends into a place of unimagined horror and violation. Keo mounts a desperate campaign to find her–a heroic effort that becomes his destiny.}

The Descendants | Kaui Hart Hemmings | 2007

_{Matthew King was once considered one of the most fortunate men in Hawaii. His missionary ancestors who came to the islands were financially and culturally progressive—one even married a Hawaiian princess, making Matt a royal descendant and one of the state’s largest landowners. But now his luck has changed.}

_{His two daughters are out of control—10-year-old Scottie has a smart-ass attitude and a desperate need for attention and 17-year-old Alex, a former model, is a recovering drug addict. His thrill-seeking and high-maintenance wife, Joanie, lies in a coma after a boat racing accident, and will soon be taken off life support.}

_{The King family can hardly picture life without their charismatic mother, but as they come to terms with this tragedy, their sadness is mixed with a sense of freedom that shames them—and spurs them into surprising actions.}