Monday, April 4, 2011

Moloka'i by Alan Brennert

 Moloka'i tells a fictional tale of the leper colony on the island of Moloka'i in Hawaii.  This leper colony actually existed and the author weaves in true accounts and real people throughout the narrative.  And while the main character, Rachel, is fictitious, you know that it probably comes close to reality.  And while the subject is sad and heartbreaking - a child be taken away from her family and dropped onto this strange island at the young age of 6 - it is not depressing.  There is a feeling of  hopefulness to the novel.  Don't get me wrong -  there are moments when your heart breaks for Rachel but despite is all she triumphs. 

From Publishers Weekly

Compellingly original in its conceit, Brennert's sweeping debut novel tracks the grim struggle of a Hawaiian woman who contracts leprosy as a child in Honolulu during the 1890s and is deported to the island of Moloka'i, where she grows to adulthood at the quarantined settlement of Kalaupapa. Rachel Kalama is the plucky, seven-year-old heroine whose family is devastated when first her uncle Pono and then she develop leprous sores and are quarantined with the disease. While Rachel's symptoms remain mild during her youth, she watches others her age dying from the disease in near total isolation from family and friends. Rachel finds happiness when she meets Kenji Utagawa, a fellow leprosy victim whose illness brings shame on his Japanese family. After a tender courtship, Rachel and Kenji marry and have a daughter, but the birth of their healthy baby brings as much grief as joy, when they must give her up for adoption to prevent infection. The couple cope with the loss of their daughter and settle into a productive working life until Kenji tries to stop a quarantined U.S. soldier from beating up his girlfriend and is tragically killed in the subsequent fight. The poignant concluding chapters portray Rachel's final years after sulfa drugs are discovered as a cure, leaving her free to abandon Moloka'i and seek out her family and daughter. Brennert's compassion makes Rachel a memorable character, and his smooth storytelling vividly brings early 20th-century Hawaii to life. Leprosy may seem a macabre subject, but Brennert transforms the material into a touching, lovely account of a woman's journey as she rises above the limitations of a devastating illness.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A dazzling historical novel."--The Washington Post

"Moloka'i is a haunting story of tragedy in a Pacific paradise."--Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek
 
"Alan Brennert draws on historical accounts of Kalaupapa and weaves in traditional Hawaiian stories and customs.... Moloka'i is the story of people who had much taken from them but also gained an unexpected new family and community in the process."--Chicago Tribune

"[An] absorbing novel...Brennert evokes the evolution of--and hardships on--Moloka'i in engaging prose that conveys a strong sense of place."--National Geographic Traveler

"Moving and elegiac." --Honolulu Star-Bulletin

 
"Compellingly original...Brennert's compassion makes Rachel a memorable character, and his smooth storytelling vividly brings early twentieth-century Hawai'i to life." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)