by Lisa Linn Kanae
Islands Linked by Ocean is more than a collection of Hawai‘i-based short stories: It’s the verbal equivalent of a heavy, glossy coffee table book full of in-the-moment images imbued with a unique elegance and wonder by the artist who captured them. Lisa Linn Kanae conjures frame after frame, many familiar to most of us, but in a light that brings out a grace we never knew existed: a veteran steersman berating his novice stroker, the banter and gossip of women in an office breakroom, a starving dog tied to a chain-link fence behind a dumpster. My own favorite is the title story which ironically contains the least amount of fiction maybe because I, too, had a McKinley-alum dad who could croon like Dean Martin. And I never realized how beautifully he did so until I read Kanae’s work about her own father.
by James Dooley
Published in 2015,
Sunny Skies, Shady Characters: Cops, Killers, and Corruption in the Aloha State reads like true inspiration for the next hit streamed crime drama script. Author James Dooley has a knack for taking the complex real life underworld of Hawai‘i, exposing its reach and how it’s shaped Hawai‘i. Dooley’s career as an investigative journalist is evident through his skillful prose. The international cast of real-life characters in this read plays out in a darkly satisfying way. It’s a window into an intriguing part of Hawai‘i history and it’s ripe for an engaging read.