It is encouraging that at 91 years old, Bill Fernandez has new stories to tell.
End of the Gods, his most recently published novel—for which he has already written a prequel!—is set, as are all his books, in his native Hawaii. Praised by Kirkus Reviews as “an excellent, well-told primer on Hawaiian history,” the novel tells Hawaii’s origin story and how its inhabitants overthrew the kapu, or religious, system that inflicted the severest penalties for the mildest infractions.
The story’s chief protagonist, the warrior Kalani, is determined to end the terrible reign of the gods. He reflects on his eventual dissatisfaction with Lono, a more peaceful deity in the Hawaiian pantheon of gods:
Lono was a quixotic god, willing to kill and humiliate. I learned nothing of good moral values from the priests who venerated this god of fertility. Christianity, Kalani found interesting. Worshipers had a book of wisdom, the Bible, and a belief if you had faith in God and his son Jesus, you could live forever in a heavenly kingdom. That was different than the kahuna and kapu system that I have grown up in. Under those verbal rules that could be changeable on any given day, the only future certainty was death.
From France to the fledgling United States, it was an age of revolution. What distinguished Hawaii’s rebellion was that, unlike the peasants who revolted in France, it was the nobles and aristocrats who decided it was time for change, Fernandez notes. “In 1820,” he says, “Christian missionaries arrived from Massachusetts. They had heard about gods and torture and said they were there to knock down the temples. The Hawaiians had already done it. That’s a fantastic story to tell.”
Warriors loomed large in Fernandez’s childhood. “As children, we made our own slingshots and spears,” he says. But following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (he was 10), the days of Fernandez and his friends playing warriors, or even cowboys and Indians, were replaced by playing Japanese versus Americans, with the Japanese portrayed by Fernandez’s own Japanese friends.
“The island had lots of Japanese who came to work on the plantations,” explains Judith, his wife of 37 years, who contributed maps and illustrations for the book. “So Bill’s friends in the neighborhood were mostly Japanese kids. They played Japanese soldiers, and the Hawaiian and Portuguese kids played the Americans.” The big fear, Fernandez adds, was that President Roosevelt would order the internment of the Japanese population. “One of my uncles was 100% Japanese,” he says. “My cousin from that marriage was half Japanese. They were 40% of the population. People who lived across the street were taken.”
Books loomed large in Fernandez’s childhood. “I got asthma, and because I was bedridden, I haunted the library.” One of his favorites was Arthur Ransome’s adventure series, Swallows and Amazons.
But he was encouraged to study law by his father. “He was a small businessman, and he struggled all of his life,” Fernandez recalls. “He felt he got screwed by not knowing the law. He kept telling me, ‘You have to be a lawyer.’ ” After a career in general practice, Fernandez became a judge in Santa Clara, California. He was a sitting judge for 20 years before going into private judging, which he jokingly termed “have gavel, will travel.”
Upon his retirement, Fernandez and Judith traveled before returning to Hawaii roughly 13 years ago. He became involved in committees “of one kind or another,” he says, as well as philanthropy on behalf of the local historical society. This inspired him to write about growing up in the town of Kapa’a on the island of Kauai.
In 2009, in his late 70s, he wrote Rainbows Over Kapa’a. Several others followed, including Kaua’i Kids in Peace and War (2013), which Kirkus Reviews calls “a fresh take on 1930s and ’40s Hawaii.” In it, he chronicled how the newsreels exhibited in his father’s movie theater broadened his horizons and planted the seeds of his interest in history and other countries.
In 2016, at the age of 85, he wrote his first novel, Cult of Ku, a murder mystery set in the 1920s that introduced attorney Grant Kingsley and blended Hawaiian history, folklore, and labor struggles. There are currently three books in the Kingsley series, which Kirkus Reviews praises for incorporating Hawaiian history in their intriguing plots. Hawaii’s history also played an integral role in Fernandez’s trilogy of books featuring John Tana (John Tana: An Adventure Tale of Old Hawaii; Gods, Ghosts, and Kahuna on Kauai; and Hawaiian Rebellions).
End of the Gods further explores Fernadez’s fascination with the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and how the people at that time dealt with the new civilization.
Anyone writing about Hawaii’s tumultuous history does so in the shadow of James Michener’s epic bestseller Hawaii, which was published in 1959, the year Hawaii achieved statehood. The book was a phenomenal bestseller and was adapted for the big screen, starring Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews. Fernandez has one Hawaiian word for Michener’s novel, but its English translation is not fit to print here. Notes Judith, “Some people tell me they don’t need to read Bill’s books because they read Hawaii. I really have to bite my tongue.”
“You can rely on my history,” is all Fernandez, who was a history major at Stanford University, allows. Legal writing prepared him for the rigorous research he compiles for his books, he says. It helped him to focus on relevant details and patterns of behavior.
In addition to writing, Fernandez had been playing golf, but health issues forced him to “hang it up” last December. He and Judith walk, but recently, he suggested to her that they might want to take up karate. He may have been joking.
But he has found other outlets to further pursue his love of writing and passion for history. Recently, he has been writing a series of articles for, and letters to, the editor of his local newspaper about the war in Ukraine. “I can’t help it,” he says with a laugh. “You’ve got to keep active and keep your mind working, my friend.”
Donald Liebenson is a Chicago-based writer.
