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The history of Hawaii may be said to be the story of arrivals - from the eruption of volcanoes on the ocean floor 18,000 feet below, the first hardy seeds that over millennia found their way to the islands, and the confused birds blown from their migratory routes, to the early Polynesian adventurers who sailed across the Pacific in double canoes, the Spanish galleons en route to the Philippines, and the British navigators in search of a Northwest Passage, soon followed by pious Protestant missionaries, shipwrecked sailors, and rowdy Irish poachers escaped from Botany Bay - all wanderers washed ashore, sometimes by accident. This is true of many cultures, but in Hawaii, no one seems to have left. And in Hawaii, a set of myths accompanied each of these migrants--legends that shape our understanding of this mysterious place.
In Paradise of the Pacific, Susanna Moore, the award-winning author of In the Cut and The Life of Objects, pieces together the elusive, dramatic story of late-eighteenth-century Hawaii - its kings and queens, gods and goddesses, missionaries, migrants, and explorers - a not-so-distant time of abrupt transition, in which an isolated pagan world of human sacrifice and strict taboo, without a currency or a written language, was confronted with the equally ritualized world of capitalism, Western education, and Christian values.
"Starred Review. Moore's background in storytelling radiates throughout this work, creating a quick- paced and well-crafted narrative. Highly recommended for the armchair historian and those intrigued by Hawaiian history, maritime exploration, and the history of Christian missionaries." - Library Journal
"This is a fascinating and well-balanced look at how a unique culture came to be and the heartbreaking manner of its end." - Publishers Weekly
"Paradise of the Pacific, a superb telling of the Hawaiian story from the earliest voyages, is immensely satisfying on so many levels - as a detailed history, as a startling drama, as a cultural heritage of bellicosity and beauty. Susanna Moore, a brilliant novelist, a scrupulous researcher, gives this complex history an astonishing vitality." - Paul Theroux
"I find this book exhilarating - truly exciting, new, everything good--the people, the clothes, the food: every word." - Joan Didion, author of Blue Nights on The Life of Objects
This information about Paradise of the Pacific was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: © Denise Applewhite, Princeton University
Susanna Moore is the author of seven novels, among them the 1995 thriller In the Cut, which was made into a film by Jane Campion, and My Old Sweetheart, which won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for First Fiction and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Born in 1945 in Pennsylvania, she was raised in Hawaii and worked as a model and script reader in Los Angeles and New York City before beginning her career as a writer.
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