The Printed Page

Title: Honolulu
Author/website(s): Alan Brennert
368 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication date: March ’09
Genre: Fiction w/historical setting & aspects
Review book or pleasure reading: Pleasure reading
New-to-me author: No
Would I recommend this book: Definitely; I also highly recommended his other novel Moloka’i
Would I read more from this author: Looking forward to whatever he writes next.
Journal notes: Pleasure reading – no review.

“Honolulu” is the richly imagined story of Jin, a young ‘picture bride’ who leaves her native Korea – where girls are so little valued that she is known as Regret – and journeys to Hawaii in 1914 in search of a better life. Instead of the prosperous young husband and the chance at an education she has been promised, Jin is quickly married off to a poor, embittered labourer who takes his disappointments out on his new wife, forcing her to make her own way in a strange land. Struggling to build a business with the help of her fellow picture brides, Jin finds both opportunity and prejudice, but ultimately transforms herself from a naive young girl into a resourceful woman. Prospering along with her adopted city, which is fast growing from a small territorial capital to the great multicultural city it is today, Jin can never forget the people she left behind in Korea, and returns one last time to make her peace with her former life.