THE ALOHA SPIRIT

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.