Hawaii: A Novel by James A. Michener - Hawaii

In Hawaii, Pulitzer Prize–winning author James Michener weaves the classic saga that brought Hawaii's epic history vividly alive to the American public on its initial publication in 1959, and continues to mesmerize even today.

The volcanic processes by which the Hawaiian Islands grew from the ocean floor were inconceivably slow, and the land remained untouched by man for countless centuries until, little more than a thousand years ago, Polynesian seafarers made the perilous journey across the Pacific and discovered their new home. They lived and flourished in this tropical paradise according to their ancient traditions and beliefs until, in the early nineteenth century, American missionaries arrived, bringing a new creed and a new way of life to a Stone Age society. The impact of the missionaries had only begun to be absorbed when other national groups, with equally different customs, began to migrate in great numbers to the islands. The story of modern Hawaii, and of this novel, is one of how disparate peoples, struggling to keep their identity yet live with one another in harmony, ultimately joined together to build America's strong and vital fiftieth state.

Hawaii
In the late sixties during the summer between 8th and 9th grades, I was gleaning through the relatively few paperback novels in my parents library for anything interesting to read. It was my good fortune to stumble upon a copy of James Micheners Hawaii on an upper shelf. It looked formidable at more than an inch thick, but I fearlessly plunged in with all the confidence I had assumed from earlier tackling J.R.R. Tolkeins Hobbit and Lord of the Ring series. To my delight, I was also taken for a life-changing ride into what was then a truly an entirely different universe.

Not only was Hawaii a vivid, flowing introduction to the history, the people and promise of Hawaii, to a third-generation offspring of Japanese-American grandparents such as myself, whose entire family was interned in US government relocation centers during World War II on the mainland, Micheners book was riveting and revolutionary! I must have read and re-read it six, maybe seven times in a row. To this very date of all books Ive read since, this novel stands alone.

More significantly, in the heyday of the Dick & Jane readers, Hawaii was the first novel I read prior to age 21, which featured a cast of Asian-American characters as fully-fleshed out and on equal footing to those of the Caucasian-American characters, a precious and affirming detail for which Ill be eternally in this memorable and most-productive authors debt.

For More 5 Star Reviews, Complete Product Review and The Lowest Prices Please Visit:
Buy Hawaii: A Novel by James A. Michener At The Lowest Price!