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From the award-winning author of Hula, a dazzling saga that moves from Hawaii to California and back, about the generations of women tasked with protecting the history and place that made them.
A young woman lies in a hospital bed in a coma, watched over by her estranged grandmother. Some say she jumped off the cliff; others say she was swept away by a wave. But her tutu at her bedside suspects something else is wrong, that the reason for the hardship and heartbreak in their family history is tied to a story that she's never told—one about a powerful stone, the pohaku, that her family was tasked with protecting generations ago. In fits and starts, the grandmother begins ...
We travel back in time to the eighteenth century, when the explorer James Cook becomes the first European to visit the Hawaiian Islands. Cook arrives in pursuit of an ancient prophecy, a key that would unlock the mysteries of the world, but he is killed before he can learn about the mysterious stone—a stone born alongside future Hawaiian royalty, the key to something even more powerful than Cook could have imagined.
So begins a thrilling family saga of the women charged with protecting the pohaku, as it is taken from Hawai'i to California and possibly beyond, bringing fortune to the well-intentioned and misfortune to the bad. But with each successive generation, the fractures caused by its displacement widen until it becomes clear that the pohaku's story must survive if there is to be any hope at all of the family's—and a nation's—reconciliation with their home, with nature, and with each other.
Reminiscent of Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, Min Jin Lee's Pachinko, and Tommy Orange's There, There, The Pohaku is an immersive and bold novel about the history, perseverance, and resilience of the Hawaiian people.
"Hakes successfully evokes the grandmother's conflicted feelings about her burden, which contributed to her strained relationship with her daughter as well as Mo`opuna, but the novel is hard to follow, due in part to the jumble of Hawaiian terms and the drawn-out yet sketchy historical details, particularly of California's 19th-century development. It's a mixed bag." —Publishers Weekly
"Colliding grand, national narratives with marginalized stories, Hakes' novel challenges the very concept of 'history,' particularly its relationship to language. Who has the right to document experiences in 'words,' whether written or verbal? Just what can words—spoken and unspoken—do to those grappling with historical injustices and trauma? Through storytelling, The Pōhaku illustrates how power both harms and heals." —Booklist
"A novel of exquisite beauty and grace, The Pohaku follows a grandmother and granddaughter, and generations of ancestors, tasked with safekeeping the divine stone that unites a kingdom and carries the mysteries of the world. Their tale captures how secrets can destroy people or bring them together as these powerful, vibrant women battle the outside forces threatening their culture and the interpersonal dramas threatening their bonds. Hakes imparts Hawaiian history with the elegance of a poet all while asking the age-old question: What do we owe our families, our communities, and ourselves? An absolute stunner." —Laura Wardell, author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm
This information about The Pohaku 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.
Jasmin Iolani Hakes was born and raised in Hilo, Hawai'i. She is the author of the novel Hula, and her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee. She is the recipient of the Best Fiction award from the Southern California Writers Conference, a Squaw Valley LoJo Foundation Scholarship, a Writing by Writers Emerging Voices fellowship, and a Hedgebrook residency. She worked throughout college as a professional luau dancer. She lives in California.
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