Evocative and engaging, with a protagonist determined to keep the aloha spirit in her heart.
A historical novel traces the struggles of a woman of Spanish descent who is adopted by a Hawaiian family in Honolulu.
In 1922, at the age of 7, Dolores becomes a hānai, the Hawaiian term for a child informally adopted by another family. Her father is taking her 9-year-old brother, Pablo, and moving to California, where he hopes to find a job. Her mother died several years earlier, and her father believes Dolores is too young to work on the mainland. But Noelani, Dolores’ adoptive mother, knows better. She assigns the little girl to laundry duty, an arduous task for a child. Noelani and her husband, Kanoa, have 10 children, most of them hānai, plus she takes in laundry and gets ironing jobs from the Army base. Despite her overwhelming feelings of abandonment and ever present physical exhaustion, Dolores finds a friend in Maria, Noelani’s 17-year-old hānai daughter; they become as close as true sisters. From Maria, Dolores learns the Hawaiian philosophy of aloha, which means, among other things, “mutual regard and affection,” extending “warmth in caring with no obligation in return.” “Love those around you,” Maria tells her. “The aloha spirit will keep you strong even if you don’t love what people do.” Dolores will hold on to these words even after she moves to California following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Ulleseit’s novel was inspired by the true story of her husband’s grandmother. The poignant and atmospheric tale captures the pre–World War II diversity of Hawaiian culture, a melting pot of religions and ethos influenced by the Native Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Haole (whites). The aromas, tastes, and gentle breezes of Honolulu permeate pages inflected with prose that makes liberal use of Hawaiian terminology. But the story is mostly a celebration of the exceptional strength of a simple woman, unbroken by her difficult life and abusive marriage and committed to providing her two daughters with the stability and sense of family that was missing from her own childhood.
Evocative and engaging, with a protagonist determined to keep the aloha spirit in her heart. (glossary)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-723-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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