First Chapter: DIAMOND HEAD by Cecily Wong

First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted weekly by Bibliophile by the Sea. Share the first paragraph of your current read. Also visit Teaser Tuesdays meme hosted by Jenn.

Diamond Head by Cecily Wong
Published April 14, 2015 by Harper
Genre: historical novel
First chapter, first paragraph:

Inside the care, it smells like hibiscus. It was his mother's idea; something subtle, she told him, but fresh. Something alive. As the man pulls from his driveway he is grateful, just this once, for his mother's meddling. He breathes in. Already, the sweet smell is working on his nerves. 

Teaser: 

There are few things in life as beautiful as a fresh start," Frank whispered, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me into his chest, sheltering me from the wind off the ocean, pressing me into his eager heartbeat. "This will be ours."

Book description: At the turn of the nineteenth-century, Frank Leong, a wealthy shipping industrialist, moves his family from China to the island of Oahu. But something ancient follows the Leongs to Hawaii, haunting them. 

The parable of the red string of fate, the cord which binds one intended beloved to her perfect match, also punishes for mistakes in love, passing a destructive knot down the family line. 
Now the Leong’s survival rests with young Theresa, Frank Leong’s only grandchild, eighteen and pregnant, the heir apparent to her ancestors’ punishing knots. Told through the eyes of the Leong’s secret-keeping daughters and wives and spanning The Boxer Rebellion to Pearl Harbor to 1960s Hawaii, Diamond Head is a tale of tragic love, shocking lies, poignant compromise, aching loss, heroic acts of sacrifice and, miraculous hope. (publisher)

Based on the first paragraph, the teaser, and the book description, would you read on?

Book Review: This Is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila

Title: This Is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila
Published July 9, 2013; Hogarth
Genre: literary fiction

"Tourists," he said. They remind me of crabs. The color of their skin." Cameron nodded in agreement, then realized he didn't feel the same. He knew tourists by their choice of car, not their skin color. Locals didn't drive convertibles; they drove trucks. With air-conditioning.(p. 94)

My comments: I was interested in Kristiana's stories of Hawaii as I had visited Oahu once some years back, though I never had a chance to talk much with the locals or the expatriates who lived permanently on the islands. I thought it was Paradise, of course, the lovely beaches and scenery, the green of the hills. But in Paradise, as Kristiana shows us, there might be more going on underneath.

I was reminded of this when I recall my trip to Oahu, running onto a deserted beach near the North Shore, eager to plunge up to my knees in the waves. Luckily for me, a Japanese Hawaiian in diving gear came out of the water at that moment and warned me to stay out of the water because of dangerous undertow that could pull me in and under.

Paradise can be deceptive, as Kristiana's stories tell us. There is danger for a young American tourist though she is told that the personable tourist she befriends in the bar is an ex-convict whose prison tattoos are obvious. People on the island themselves don't always have lives of luxury and comfort as a paradise could suggest. There are cock fighters and breeders and the dangers of rivalry and competition among these groups. There are hotel housekeepers who see what's going with tourists. as well as local career girls who have been educated on the U.S. mainland and have returned to the island; and a mixture and assortment of residents who make the Hawaiian islands no longer purely Hawaiian.

An enlightening collection of stories of Hawaii today. And also of the local Hawaiians whose lives and problems are similar to those of anyone anywhere in the world.

Objective rating: 4/5/5

Publisher's description:
Intimately tied to the Hawaiian Islands, This Is Paradise explores the relationships among native Hawaiians, local citizens, and emigrants from (and to) the contiguous forty-eight states. There is tension between locals and tourists, between locals and the military men that populate their communities, between local Hawaiian girls who never leave and those who do for higher education and then return.

The author Kahakauwila is a careful observer of her protagonists’ actions–and, sometimes, their inaction. Her portrayal of people whose lives have lost their center of gravity is acute, often heartbreaking, and suffused with a deeply felt empathy.

For more reviews of This Is Paradise, visit the tour schedule. 

KRISTIANA KAHAKAUWILA, a native Hawaiian, was raised in Southern California. She earned a master’s in fine arts from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from Princeton University. She has worked as a writer and editor for Wine Spectator, Cigar Aficionado, and Highlights for Children magazines and taught English at Chaminade University in Honolulu.
She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Western Washington University.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the author for a review copy of this book. 

Wordless Wednesday: Hawaii

Blue skies,

nothing but blue skies

More Wordless Wednesdays

Book Review: A Map of Paradise by Linda Ching Sledge

A Map of Paradise: A Novel of Nineteenth Century Hawaii by Linda Ching Sledge, author of Empire of Heaven.

Publisher's description: With its green cliffs and silvery waterfalls, Hawaii offers radiant hope to Rulan and Pao An - exiles from China, immigrants with the will to succeed despite hardship and prejudice and enemies from their homeland. But his proud couple's hardest struggle will be with their own child - Mulan, called Molly.

Born in Hawaii's sacred hills, Molly grows to despise the old Chinese ways. Locked in perpetual combat with her parents,she is drawn into a dangerous love affair with a glamorous but decadent poet, a protege of the (Hawaiian) king. And even as he family's fortunes rise, Molly's mother watches in sorrow, fearing that her child will realize too late that happiness lies far closer to home.

Beautifully told, A Map of Paradise offers the colorful sweep of history with the satisfaction of characters intimately revealed.

My comments: The Chinese immigrant Pao An worked in California before joining his wife Rulan and their daughter in Hawaii, called the Blessed Isles. There they built a life for themselves and formed a community with other immigrants. The core of the novel are the love stories of young Pao An and his wife Rulan, of their daughter Molly and the half-Hawaiian poet she lived with and loved, and of the quiet boy Lin Kong, whom Molly had grown up with and many times spurned as an adult.

This historical novel describes the arrival of the Chinese as laborers for the sugar plantations in Hawaii in the mid 1800s, and of their gradual integration into the island economy as farmers, traders, and businessmen. The novel tells of the exhaustive work in forming a Chinatown community out of the two warring groups of Chinese - the Punti and Hakka clans.

The book also details the history of the Hawaiian kingdom and the dying off of important members of its royal family in the latter part of the 19th century, giving way to increasing American and British influence and control of the islands.

Rating: I gave this novel five stars for its descriptive storytelling and its detailed historical content on the Hawaiian kingdom and the settling of immigrants there in the late 1800s.

A Map of Paradise was printed in 1997 by Bantam Books. I read this book as part of a reading challenge, which requires 10 books on China or by Chinese authors, now through Sept. 1, 2010: The China Challenge. I also submitted it for the Chill Baby, Chill! review challenge and the 100 + Reading Challenge.

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Wordless Wednesday, Aug. 19

Quiet time with water and mountains, all in calming blue!

Teaser Tuesday: A Map of Paradise

From A Map of Paradise: A Novel of Nineteenth Century Hawaii by Linda Ching Sledge, 1997. Molly, the young daughter of immigrants, learns about Hawaii.

"A true child of the islands, Molly could name in Hawaiian the separate winds that blew through Nuuanu Valley by the time she was seven. Nalani had taught her to breathe with the earth, to feel the ola that coursed through land and sky and sea, to see akuas hidden in the mists, to trace the footsteps of tiny creatures called menehunes in the ancient ditches and canals that crisscrossed the hidden reaches of the valley and thus to make herself one with the spirit-infused land." (ch. 12)

Choose two sentences at random from a book of your choice: Teaser Tuesday meme courtesy of MizB at Should Be Reading