Fall Sale! Join BookBrowse today and discover exceptional books for only $3 / Month.

Summary and Reviews of Bird of Another Heaven by James Houston

Bird of Another Heaven by James Houston

Bird of Another Heaven

by James Houston
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • First Published:
  • Mar 20, 2007, 352 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2008, 352 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

A deeply engaging new novel, set in both our time and the late nineteenth century. It centers on a California woman, half Indian, half Hawaiian, who became consort and confidante to the last king of Hawaii.

From the author of Snow Mountain Passage, a saga of the Donner Party, comes a deeply engaging new novel, set in both our time and the late nineteenth century. It centers on a California woman, half Indian, half Hawaiian, who became consort and confidante to the last king of Hawaii.

The story is told by her great-grandson, Sheridan Brody, a Bay Area talk show host, whose life has reached an unexpected standstill. He can’t quite commit—he doesn’t know why—to his Japanese-American girlfriend and her five-year-old son. A corporate merger may soon threaten his job. But when he receives an on-air call from a woman claiming to be his grandmother, Sheridan feels compelled to uncover all he can about this previously unknown branch of his family, embarking on a quest that will change how he sees his future and his past.

What he finds, through the journals of his great-grandmother, Nani Keala (aka Nancy Callahan), and through his own investigations, is an almost mythic tale: how Nani, a shy girl from a remote Indian village, learns English at a local white rancher’s school and meets the Hawaiian king, David Kalakaua, on his grand progress by train across the United States in 1881, and returns with him to Honolulu. There, as his young ally and protégée, ever more assured and charming, she plays an integral role in his attempt to revive the monarchy and spirit of his people and, eventually, witnesses the mysterious circumstances surrounding his downfall.

Bird of Another Heaven
is rich in historical scene and character, based in part on actual events. Nani’s life unfolds against the backdrop of the opening of northern California and America’s rising ambitions in Asia and the Pacific during the 1800s. It is also a story of emotional intensity and compassion, equally compelling for Sheridan’s contemporary journey of self-discovery and the beautifully imagined journey of Nani, a woman of extraordinary power and appeal.

Excerpt
Bird of Another Heaven

Born in a tribal village in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Nani Keala is the daughter of an Indian mother and Hawaiian father. In 1881, at age 17, she joins a local group of Hawaiians traveling to Sacramento to welcome David Kalakaua, the king of Hawaii, who is passing through California at the end of his round-the-world tour.

The Words Came
Though the last ones drank until after midnight, they were all up early for the final leg. In skiffs and launches they made a small fleet coasting south with the current, a couple of dozen Hawaiians and mixed-bloods, Indian wives, some children. They pulled into the wharf at Sacramento and from there walked three blocks to the Central Pacific depot. The king’s two railroad cars, which had arrived overnight from Denver, had been shunted off to a siding where a crowd had already gathered, curious townspeople for the most part, here to get their first glimpse of a ruling
monarch.

Nani stayed close to the Kinsman as he ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Bird of Another Heaven starts a little slowly but picks up momentum as the two parallel stories converge. Although it never quite reach the heights of Snow Mountain Passage (pun unintended!) it is nevertheless an excellent historical novel that highlights new aspects of the well covered settlement of California, and will take most readers to places new in its exploration of the history of Hawaii...continued

Full Review (825 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Media Reviews

San Francisco Chronicle
The author’s admiration of and eloquent sorrow for the inexorable destruction of inherently graceful and spiritually rooted alternative ways of life are both characteristic and affecting. Akin to his characters, Houston seems committed to an honorable memory of what has gone before.

Washington Post - David Treuer
Houston has given us the story of a lifetime, filled with characters who are posed, not animated. Without an author willing to break the bones of historical fact to extract the marrow, all we are left holding in our hands is a soulfully and sensitively produced diagram of those bones, not a story that contains their true meaning.

Booklist - Brad Hooper
Starred Review. A vivid visitation to the past…pulls readers inexorably into its rich recesses.

Kirkus Reviews
A distinguished successor to Houston's superb fictionalization of the Donner Party ordeal, Snow Mountain Passage (2001), and compelling evidence that he's one of the best historical novelists working today.

Library Journal
Although the dialog is sometimes strained, and character reactions often play to the overdramatic rather than the subtle, these are minor irritants in a strong and compelling read that fills a gap in the historical fiction of Hawaii.

Publishers Weekley
Though it gets off to a slow start, Houston builds momentum as the novel's scope widens, and the historical detail is mesmerizing.

Author Blurb Karen Joy Fowler
A fascinating account delivered with power, precision, and a generous imagination. There is no better historical novelist working today than Jim Houston.

Author Blurb Richard Ford
James Houston is a novelist whose work shines with profound humanity. He vividly imagines history, our residence on earth, our racial quotient, the mystery of our fragile human character as though these concerns were fiction’s truest subjects.

Reader Reviews

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



James D. Houston is the author of seven previous novels and a number of nonfiction works including Farewell to Manzanar, which he coauthored with his wife, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. Since 1962, he and Jeanne have lived in Santa Cruz, within view of Monterey Bay, where they raised their three children. They currently live in a Victorian house once owned by Patty Read, a survivor of the Donner Party who appears in Houston's novel Snow Mountain Passage.

Houston says he had a similar experience to...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Bird of Another Heaven, try these:

  • Honolulu jacket

    Honolulu

    by Alan Brennert

    Published 2010

    About this book

    More by this author

    From the bestselling author of Moloka'i comes the irresistible story of a young immigrant bride in a ramshackle town that becomes a great modern city.

  • Museum of Human Beings jacket

    Museum of Human Beings

    by Colin Sargent

    Published 2009

    About this book

    A Shoshone woman, Sacagawea, leads Lewis and Clark to the Pacific at the turn of the 19th century. On her back is her infant son, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, the youngest member of the Expedition - a child caught between two worlds.

We have 5 read-alikes for Bird of Another Heaven, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by James Houston
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Playground
    Playground
    by Richard Powers
    The primary narrator of Richard Powers' latest novel, Playground, is Todd Keane, who at 57 years old...
  • Book Jacket: The Empusium
    The Empusium
    by Olga Tokarczuk
    Not long after checking into Willi Opitz's "Guesthouse for Gentlemen," young Mieczysław Wojnicz...
  • Book Jacket
    Suggested in the Stars
    by Yoko Tawada
    In Scattered All Over the Earth, Yoko Tawada's 2018 lightly dystopian novel, a ragtag group of young...
  • Book Jacket: Shred Sisters
    Shred Sisters
    by Betsy Lerner
    "No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister" is a wry aphorism that appears late in ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Libby Lost and Found
    by Stephanie Booth

    Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love.

  • Book Jacket

    The Bog Wife
    by Kay Chronister

    Five West Virginia siblings unearth secrets after the rupture of a supernatural bargain tying their fate to their land.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win Let Us Descend

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward imagines the life of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War in this instant classic.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J O the B

and be entered to win..