HOUSE OF MANY GODS

Davenport’s sometimes evocative, often rambling third novel (Song of the Exile, 1999, etc.) is a portrait of a Hawaiian woman struggling against poverty and loneliness.

Young Ana Kapakahi, motherless and haphazardly cared for by a large extended family, is just another “illegitimate” in a house filled with fierce women, their children and a cadre of old men silenced by war. Angry and emotionally crippled after she is deserted by her mother, Anahola, Ana flirts with the rough life on the Wai’anae Coast. Babies, drugs, gang shootings, the lure of beautiful brown boys—it’s all out there waiting. But with cousin Rosie’s encouragement, Ana does well in school, and with the financial support of Anahola (her visits are infrequent, but her checks are regular), she becomes an emergency-room doctor. Anahola abandoned Ana for a life on the mainland, where she found Max, a scientist working in immunology. Anahola becomes Max’s research assistant, and the two travel the globe lecturing on the dangers of radiation poisoning. Davenport flimsily connects this to the other characters—Ana’s favorite cousin Lopaka begins protesting the munitions testing on Oahu, a loved one dies of radiation exposure, and so on. Though Davenport’s language and imagery is often lovely, the over-extended themes (the erosion of traditional Hawaiian ways, the dangers of the nuclear age, the corruption of the new Russia) take the reader far away from Ana.

Davenport has skill, but her novel falters.