Hawaii
Suggested by: Reddit friend
Traveled: July 12-24

Hawaii is an afterthought most of the time. It comes in the same post-script breath as Alaska in U.S. history, always inhabiting its own corner cutout on the pull-down maps in classrooms. I had never really spent any time thinking about Hawaii, and am ashamed to say was surprised when I pulled up Google maps and realized just how far out in the middle of the Pacific it actually is.

But I just went to summer school, folks. Michener’s Hawaii was an epic crash course. It’s a generational saga, starting with the birth of its principal character — the island — bubbling up billions of years ago from a primordial vent below the ocean. The novel charts the human histories of the families who came to Hawaii and struggled to make the islands a part of their story. Polynesians from Bora Bora, New England missionaries, Chinese peasants, Japanese villagers and the modern day “native” Hawaiian, born from centuries of the melting pot’s influence.

I became seriously invested in these families. And the genius of Michener’s writing is that it never made me choose a side. With deft care and deep respect, Michener told their stories honestly. Even in the moments that forced fierce moral objections or historical tragedies, I sympathized with each new friend. Instead of righteous indignation against the tides of history, Michener’s Hawaii provoked a deeper, more human feeling. It told the story of a place, but more than that, recognized that a place’s story is fundamentally written by the lives that crack open its soils and worship its winds. It told the truth. We struggle for ourselves alone, but can never escape our undeniable ties to one another.

The book triumphs in its early beginnings and rich middle. It falters a bit as Hawaii enters more modern times, as though Michener himself was still too close to the events to make sense or beauty out of their futures. I was ready to leave Hawaii around page 700, but pushed on a couple hundred pages further out of respect for the stories of those with whom I had come so far. I now leave Hawaii with a much deeper appreciation of the islands and their history, with poignant truths that once again show the power and promise of fiction.