Title: Moloka'i Author: Alan Brennert
Published: October 21, 2003
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 405
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:This richly imagined novel, set in Hawai'i more than a century ago, is an extraordinary epic of a little-known time and place—and a deeply moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.
Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. Here her life is supposed to end—but instead she discovers it is only just beginning.
Every expectation I had going into Moloka’i turned out to be completely wrong. I expected this to be an gloomy, depressing story about a Hawaiian leper colony and a slow trudge toward death. Instead, Alan Brennert writes of a vibrant community full of inhabitants whose lives weren’t so very different from any other person’s. Though the characters in this book face hard times, overall Moloka’i is a triumphant look at life in Hawai’i during the first half of the twentieth century.
Beginning in 1891, Brennert introduces his protagonist, Rachel Kalama, a young girl living in Honolulu just as the monarchy is being deposed in favor of Provisional Government. It’s a tumultuous time, made more so because Rachel catches leprosy and is transported off O’ahu to a settlement for leprosy patients in Kalaupapa on Moloka’i. There, Rachel finds her home for the next several decades, and forges a family to replace the one she lost.
I fully expected that Moloka’i would be about a bunch of people scratching out a meager living on some abandoned rock, forgotten by society. That’s not at all what was going on. Rachel finds out that Kalaupapa is a small town like any other, with churches and a general store and doctors. Obviously, everyone in the settlement has leprosy, but other than that, life is mostly normal, if isolated. Over the course of the text, Brennert shows Rachel age into adulthood and marry, see out two world wars, then eventually be allowed to leave the island when a treatment for Hansen’s disease (leprosy) is discovered.
This book gave readers such an excellent snapshot into the past. Brennert covers such a wide timespan that the progression of history was fun to watch, even if a lot of the events were merely peripheral to the main storyline of Moloka’i. I loved how evident it was that the author had done significant research into both Hawaiian history in general, and the more specific history of the leprosarium at Kalaupapa.
For readers of historical fiction who like to see something different, Moloka’i tells a unique story of Hawai’i, leprosy, and family. Rachel was a great character to follow, and her journey was satisfying and her ultimate triumph made the entire book extremely worthwhile.
