MAN IN PARADISE

A story of Hawaii today, of the conflict between Hawaiian and Japanese, exploiting politicians and naive natives. And it makes good reading. Noah Kapahulas, epileptic and idiot, runs muck and kills a Japanese girl. To appease the increasingly powerful, increasingly vindictive Japanese element, he is sentenced to death, instead of being committed to an asylum. Baird, liberal psychiatrist, somewhat at loose ends after a disillusioning experience in Spain during the Civil War, is finally spurred on by Edith Lee, a social worker, to get back into medicine down there. He does so -- they both become involved in the Kapahulas case -- and eventually balk the self-interested, pro-Japanese politices. Not for a wide sale, but it is good, and a revealing picture of the islands, from top to bottom, with Edith and Baird as romantic filler.