Makai Book

The story of a friendship altered forever by Pearl Harbor. In her second novel, Kathleen Tyau takes us from the shoeshine stands and dance halls of Honolulu's Chinatown to the rough, remote Maui coast in this saga of two Chinese Hawaiian women and their intertwined lives. Alice Lum narrates this story of her troubling but devoted friendship with her beautiful and bold best friend, Annabel Lee, whose Hawaiian great-grandmother performed the hula for royalty. Alice and Annabel graduate from high school with gas masks slung across their white dresses in the spring following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Both girls depend on handsome Sammy Woo, a friend who sparks a lasting rivalry between them. After the war, Annabel leaves Hawaii and goes "makai"-toward the sea-all the way to Florida to seek a mainland life she has long imagined. Shy Alice stays close to home, but even there she is not safe-not from the anxieties of marriage or motherhood, or from the island itself. Years later, Alice and Annabel meet again in Hawaii, where they confront their difficult history, which seems to repeat itself with their children. Alice must learn to find her place among the tangled strands of the Woo and Lee families, and to understand the nature of love. Beautifully written and brutally honest, Makai is an extraordinary novel about friendship, loss, and the sea.Read More