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Mondavi and Backen: Napa’s First Family and its Favorite Architect
An invitation landed in my inbox recently with the subject heading: “Mondavi and Backen.” Reading a bit further, I learned that the Peter Mondavi family, owners of the Charles Krug winery, had hired the famed Napa Valley-based architect, Howard Backen. I was invited to the groundbreaking celebration for the $6 million refurbishment of the winery’s…
Read MoreVeering Off the Hana Highway
My family and I just returned from a week in Hana, on the eastern coast of Maui. The town is probably best known for the road leading to it –a series of heart-stopping one-lane bridges and sheer vertical drops to the ocean below. But tourists who drive to Hana and back in a day from…
Read MoreLunching with One of Hawaii’s Real ‘Descendants’
By Julia Flynn Siler, first published in the Wall Street Journal‘s Speakeasy blog on 3/12/2012 Julia Flynn Siler and Her Royal Highness Princess Abigail Kawananakoa. A few days before heading to Honolulu on book tour for “Lost Kingdom,” I got a phone call from the assistant to Her Royal Highness Princess Abigail Kawananakoa, the woman…
Read MoreRetracing Lili‘u’s Footsteps…
Purely by chance, I found myself in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood where Hawai‘i’s last queen, Lili‘uokalani, had once lived. I was in Washington, D.C. to deliver a talk to a group of Treasury executives about my new book, Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure. I’d booked a hotel…
Read MoreTalking Story at the Outrigger Canoe Club
On my last night in Honolulu on tour for my new book, Lost Kingdom, I was invited for drinks at the Outrigger Canoe Club, which sits at the far end of Waikiki Beach, in the shadow of Diamond Head. The club is a key setting for the novel, The Descendants, which is now an Oscar-winning…
Read MoreThe Queen’s Speech
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. *** The Queen’s Speech by Don Wallace As the principals of The…
Read MoreBook Group Pick: Lost Kingdom
Mahalo nui loa – Hawaiian for thank you very much! – to the 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…
Read MoreMy Dissenting Opinion on “The Descendants” — a guest blog by Constance Hale
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…
Read MoreRemembering Pearl Harbor: How a Gilded Age Scoundrel Waged a War of Words over the estuary that became Pearl Harbor
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. But nearly seven decades before “Remember…
Read More“The Descendants” at the Napa Valley Film Festival
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…
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