Dear readers,
Here’s a Q&A from the Honolulu Weekly that I wanted to share with you. It’s in the current issue (Jan. 25-31) of the newspaper and I’ve gotten a number of comments on it already. Please let me know what you think.
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The Queen’s Speech by Don Wallace
Mahalo nui loa – Hawaiian for thank you very much! – to the half dozen or so book groups I’ve heard from around the country that have picked Lost Kingdom as their monthly or quarterly read. I’m truly grateful to all of you – from Liz Epstein’s Literary Masters groups (10 book groups in the San Francisco Bay Area) to Catherine Hartman’s lovely group of Stanford alum and other book-loving friends in Chicago to Jason Poole (The Accidental Hawaiian Crooner) who also organizes a reading group in Pittsburgh. Here are some questions to discuss on Lost Kingdom that come from Liz Epstein at Literary Masters. Hope they’re helpful and if you have other questions, I’d be delighted to skype or phone into your book group for a chat if my schedule permits.
The famed Mavericks Surf Contest, which takes place in Half Moon Bay, California, is called each year by its organizers only when conditions are right. Last year, the waves were never big enough for the competition to take place. This year, it began on January 3rd, 2012, the same day as the publication date for my new book, Lost Kingdom.
My friend, Connie Hale, grew up in Hawaii and was educated at Punahou (the elite college prep school that is also Barack Obama’s alma mater.) From there, she earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Princeton University and a masters in journalism from U.C. Berkeley. She is now a gifted author, journalist, and editor who works at San Francisco’s famed Writers’ Grotto. I’m honored to run this guest blog by Connie on the Alexander Payne film, “The Descendants,” which is set in Hawaii. Here’s her thought-provoking take on the film and the many issues surrounding land, power, and one-percenters in the Aloha State.
In the early hours of Sunday, December 7, 1941, seventy years ago, Japanese bombers launched a surprise attack against the US military base at Pearl Harbor. The devastating attack on Hawaii, which was then an American territory, profoundly shook the nation and hastened its entry into World War II.
Attack on the USS Arizona on December 7, 1941 Photo courtesy of the National Park Service Archives
Opening night at the inaugural Napa Valley Film Festival began with a walk along a red carpet into the city’s refurbished Napa Valley Opera House, a grand name for a frontier theater dating back to 1880. Screen actors, a few industry executives, and a good sampling of Napa locals (some dressed glamorously in boas and satin evening gowns, others in work boots and down vests) sipped on wine and nibbled ice cream lollipops from Napa’s Eiko restaurant.
Catherine Thorpe, who helped research both The House of Mondavi and Lost Kingdom, joined me at the opening reception, where we quickly spotted a bespectacled man wearing a lei, or garland, of green leaves. Making our way through the crowd, we introduced ourselves.
When I arrived at a garden near the town of Captain Cook, on the big island of Hawaii, to attend a Breadfruit Festival in late September, I was a skeptic.
Prize-winning breadfruit tart at the inaugural Breadfruit Festival: Photo by Julia Flynn Siler
Beforehand, I’d talked to one of the world’s leading experts, the Breadfruit Institute’s Director, Diane Ragone PhD., who had told me she hadn’t cared for it when she first tried it. I’d learned from the Breadfruit Institute’s own website about the difficulties faced by Captain Bligh in fulfilling his mission of introducing breadfruit plants to the Caribbean (during the infamous mutiny on the bounty, the mutineers tossed the trees overboard.) I’d even found a discussion on the gardening website GardenWeb under lists of the “five WORST tropical fruits,” with one writer pronouncing breadfruit “nauseous.”
“Be sure to eat on the flight” the oft-repeated joke goes, “because the airplane meal is likely to be the best you’ll have on your trip to Hawai‘i.”
Honolulu magazine’s October cover story on Hawaiian regional cuisine traces that jibe about the Aloha State’s supposed lack of gourmet dining to Bon Appetit’s former editor-in-chief Barbara Fairchild, who advised readers to enjoy the meal on the plane, because it was the best food they’d get on a Hawai‘i vacation.
The statistics are daunting: less than two percent of all the books optioned for the screen ever enter production. Far fewer make it into theaters. My first book, The House of Mondavi was optioned twice, but never came close to becoming a movie.
That’s why it’s been a vicarious thrill to watch Kaui Hart Hemmings’ first novel, The Descendants, approach its release date of Nov. 18th as a movie from Fox Searchlight.
Novelist Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of "The Descendants"
The Descendants was Kaui’s debut novel. A dark comedy about a dysfunctional family, it was first published in 2007 to critical acclaim. The New York Times called it “refreshingly wry.”
The 'Awa plant, also known as Kava
I caught a glimpse of the sign out of the corner of my eye: “Ma’s Nic Nats & Kava Stop.” I made a quick U-turn on the Mamalahao Highway in South Kona and headed back, pulling across from a laundromat where children chased each other outside as their parents waited for clothes to dry.
From the outside, the kava bar didn’t look like much. But it was starting to rain and I had another hour before I could check into my hotel room. So I climbed out of my car and walked in.
