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Honolulu

Honolulu

by Alan Brennert (Author)

  • New

    Hardcover 2009

    $19.29
Synopsis

Honolulu is the richly imagined story of Jin, a young 'picture bride' who leaves her native Korea - where girls are so little valued that she is known as Regret - and journeys to Hawaii in 1914 in search of a better life. Instead of the prosperous young husband and the chance at an education she has been promised, Jin is quickly married off to a poor, embittered labourer who takes his disappointments out on his new wife, forcing her to make her own way in a strange land. Struggling to build a business with the help of her fellow picture brides, Jin finds both opportunity and prejudice, but ultimately transforms herself from a naive young girl into a resourceful woman. Prospering along with her adopted city, which is fast growing from a small territorial capital to the great multicultural city it is today, Jin can never forget the people she left behind in Korea, and returns one last time to make her peace with her former life. With its passionate knowledge of people and places in Hawaii far off the tourist track, Honolulu is a spellbinding story of the triumphs and sacrifices of the human spirit that is sure to become another reading group favourite.

$19.29

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Temporarily out of stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 368
 Edition: 1
 Publisher: Saint Martin's Press Inc.
Published: 02 Apr 2009
ISBN 10: 0312360401
ISBN 13: 9780312360405

Media Reviews
PRAISE FOR Honolulu, selected as One of the Best Books of 2009 by The Washington Post, and winner of Elle 's Lettres 2009 Grand Prix for Fiction A sweeping, meticulously researched saga that sees it plucky heroine, a mistreated but independent-minded Korean mail-order bride, through the highs and lows of life in twentieth-century Hawai'i, this book extends our readers' tradition of favoring lush, flavorful historical novels. - Elle A well-researched and deftly written tale....For sheer readability, it's a hit.... Brennert has a good eye for places we can't see anymore: plantation life before the unions gained power; Chinatown when it was all tenements; Waikiki before the high-rises started going up. And it's clear he has real affection for the little people and places he so vividly brings to life. He's not just using historic Honolulu as a place to set a novel; he's bringing it to life for people who haven't had the chance to imagine it before. - Honolulu Star-Bulletin To its core, Honolulu is meticulously researched....Brennert portrays the Aloha State's history as complicated and dynamic--not simply a melting pot, but a Hawaiian-style 'mixed plate' in which, as Jin sagely notes, 'many different tastes share the plate, but none of them loses its individual flavor, and together they make up a uniquely local cuisine.' - The Washington Post Successful historical fiction doesn't just take a story and doll it up with period detail. It plunges readers into a different world and defines the historical and cultural pressures the characters face in that particular time and place. That's what Los Angeles writer Alan Brennert did in his previous novel, Moloka'i, the story of diseased Hawaiians exiled in their own land. He has done it again in Honolulu, which focuses on the Asian immigrant experience in Hawaii, specifically that of Korean picture brides....This is a moving, multilayered epic by a master of historical fiction,
Author Bio
ALAN BRENNERT is the author of Moloka'i, which was a 2006-2007 BookSense Reading Group Pick and won the 2006 Bookies Award, sponsored by the Contra Costa Library, for the Book Club Book of the Year (over My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult; The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson; and A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey). It appeared on the BookSense, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Honolulu Advertiser, and (for 16 weeks) NCIBA bestseller lists. Alan has also won an Emmy Award for his work as a writer-producer on the television series L.A. Law and a Nebula Award for his story MaQui. He lives in Sherman Oaks, California.