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The Hawaiʻi Review of Books

By, for, and about those who read, write, and engage with the Islands.

08/27/2026

To ears and eyes that find refreshment in the sound and spirit of Hawai‘i paniolo there has always been one disappointing, inexplicable, truly maddening gap: Where are the cowboy stories? Huh?

Well, Tori Eldridge has just filled one puka. HAWAI‘I RAGE, her seventh novel and the second in her Ranger Makalani Pahukula series, joins her painfully underemployed protagonist, a former national park ranger who once wore a badge and gun, as she downshifts to a mere seasonal interpretative role in order to come back home. Chafing at the limits of talk-storying for tourists, Pahukula finds herself drawn into a dynastic ‘ohana range war on the Big Island.

Eldridge writes prose taut with botanical and historical detail—as you’ll soon read for yourself. Born and raised in Honolulu, her ancestry traces back to North Kohala, where the history of Hawaiian cowboys began. Her fictional Hiapo ‘ohana, she says, “traces back to the first Mexican vaqueros that King Kamehameha III brought to Hawai‘i. These Españolo (paniolo) cowboys taught the Hawaiians and local immigrants how to wrangle the marauding wild cattle gifted to King Kamehameha I and allowed to multiply under his kapu to nearly 25,000 head.”

HAWAI‘I RAGE is published by Thomas & Mercer. On Sunday, September 27, Eldridge will appear at an event hosted with the Lō‘ihi Foundation at Native Books in Honolulu. Along with an author talk about her Ranger Makalani Pahukula mysteries (from 2 to 2:40 p.m.), refreshments and a signing will take place (from 2:40 to 3 p.m.), followed by a 90-minute interactive writing workshop. From 3 to 4:30 p.m. Eldridge will focus on how to reveal heritage, history, and character without slowing the pace.

Read an excerpt of HAWAI‘I RAGE (and more!) at The Hawaiʻi Review of Books:

https://hawaiireviewofbooks.com/stories/high-mauka-paniolo

07/18/2026

Two authors, their debut novels two months apart, both featuring a tragic inundation... Maybe they should talk?

Alicia Upano's EVERYTHING TO THE SEA is a slow smoky love story broken up by a tsunami that destroys Hilo. Shay Kauwe's THE KILLING SPELL takes place on a Hawaiian Homestead on the coast of an LA devastated by a flood that submerged Hawai‘i.

Join Alicia and Shay as they discuss disaster stories (and even messier love stories), and the belief they have in the community of Hawai‘i.

This and more, only at the The Hawaiʻi Review of Books: https://hawaiireviewofbooks.com/stories/romance-interrupted

07/02/2026

Grift, graft, bloody mayhem, stealing what isn't yours… THROB editor Don Wallace says: What better way to celebrate America's Fourth than to join Chris McKinney as he uncorks some of our best Hawai‘i gangsterism from our last golden age, the Seventies.

Which also (coincidentally or not) gave us the uprising against colonialism, Overthrow and militarism, manifesting in writing, music, voyaging, and protest. Hollywood today wants to draw a facile positivity between the two grassroots forces, but McKinney ain't buying it.

Read why in "Love the Mob You’re With" by Chris McKinney. Only at The Hawaiʻi Review of Books: https://hawaiireviewofbooks.com/stories/love-the-mob-youre-with

05/08/2026

"I devoured Shay Kauwe's debut, THE KILLING SPELL, in a mad, magical rush."

This is how Alicia Upano describes her experience reading Kauwe's first book, a coming of age tale set in a Native Hawaiian settlement in an unrecognizable Los Angeles that's been devastated by a cataclysmic event.

In THE KILLING SPELL, main character Kealaokaleo is thrust into a position of leadership for her dwindling clan. Resources are scarce—save for Kealaokaleo's still-rudimentary skills of casting language-based spells.

This is a book about the power of language when that's almost all you have left. Listen in as Kauwe discusses choices and the importance of love with Alicia Upano, author of the forthcoming novel EVERYTHING TO THE SEA. (And read an excerpt of THE KILLING SPELL too!)

All this and more, only at The Hawaiʻi Review of Books: https://hawaiireviewofbooks.com/stories/when-words-kill

05/01/2026

In 1920, Duke Paoa Kahanamoku was one of the most famous athletes in the world. At the age of 30, as he considered whether or not to compete at the 1924 Paris Olympics, Duke was considered to be not only the fastest swimmer the world had ever witnessed, but also the top surfer in the universe.

That same year, Henry Fairfield Osborn, the director of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and a fervent believer in the pseudo-science of eugenics, dispatched an anthropologist to Hawaiʻi to "capture" Duke: to measure, photograph, and make a plaster cast of his athletic body to serve as the centerpiece of the conference.

In CAPTURING KAHANAMOKU: HOW A SURFING LEGEND AND A SCIENTIFIC OBSESSION REDEFINED RACE AND CULTURE (HarperOne), author Michael Rossi revisits how eugenics proponents like Osborn propagated research findings that "proved" the superiority of the white race. It's a gripping narrative that stretches from the Natural History Museum to Yale's Peabody Museum to the Bishop Museum on O‘ahu—with Duke and the entire Kahanamoku ‘ohana featured in unexpected roles.

With AI on our doorstep (and inside the house, the Xbox, and the mouse), it's sobering to think what new indignities and outrages await Duke, Hawai‘i, and Polynesia. This conversation between noted sports journalist David Davis and Rossi gives us a hint as Rossi dishes on the "captured Kahanamokus."

Read "Capturing Kahanamoku" at The Hawaiʻi Review of Books: https://hawaiireviewofbooks.com/stories/capturing-kahanamoku

03/04/2026

Always On.

That's what comes to mind when Hawaiʻi Review of Books editor Don Wallace hears the name Lee Tonouchi. Author, playwright, linguist, anthologist, cultural champion, raconteur, man-who-always-shows-up—these are just a few of the many Lee Tonouchis a person may encounter.

As it happens, for more than a year over here at THROB we've been slowly puzzling out a Pidgin Package with Lee. Now called our Pidgin Pak, it grew out of reading Tonouchi's 2009 academic paper, written in Pidgin about Pidgin and Local Hip-Hop, that he presented at a conference. Lee took on the conundrum of conflicting social dialects, or creoles, or whatever is your nom de jour, that should be friends but weren't.

The paper was presented but never published, which seemed a shame. Our editorial challenge was how to find a frame or context for publishing a single academic paper from 2009.

Instead, the game-changer arrived in the form of a rising Pidgin star—Kaua‘i's thomas iannucci, a three-time Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award-winner as a rapper and hip-hop artist who had also recently evolved into a serious writer of fiction and creativenonfiction. In iannucci Tonouchi has his counterpart, a fellow soul steeped in creole, one possessed of the same revolutionary spirit.

In this Pidgin Pak you'll find Tonouchi's fabled lost paper, "Hidden Pidgin," then iannucci's answering essay "On Shame, Or, Hakum No More So Much Pidgin in Hawaii Hip Hop?" Then comes an iannucci short story, "Hanapepe, 1924," which places us at the aftermath of the massacre of plantation workers and labor organizers.

P.S. The Pidgin in the paper and these stories is each author's own. We did no copyediting and certainly no spellchecking. Still, for any errors or perceived inaccuracies in the Pidgin Pak you may, in the now-immortal words of iannucci, "get mad at don." That goes for the headline "Da Pidgin Guccis."

So come and get your Pidgin Pak. While our prose and design may be zippy, Zippy's we ain't. (For one thing, zero calories—always our promise to you, our readers.)

This and more! Always on: hawaiireviewofbooks.com

02/19/2026

James Nakamura starts the new THROB year with a story about ‘opihi, the tiny tasty univalve that lives—if human foragers don't find them—deep in the seashore's rocky crevices. For Nakamura, creative director of Honolulu Magazine and regular contributor here, these ‘opihi are endowed with a power unimaginable to us: the ability to observe and record, like cone-hatted GoPros.

For this so-far annus horribilis we have 10 stories stacked up awaiting their day on THROB. So why did we go with "Memoir of an ‘Opihi"?

For one thing, ‘opihi are humble, not muscle-bound like ‘ulua, not batu-speedy bruisers like pig. They're small and make themselves even smaller because they know the bad guys are always out there. They hide where the waves crash to discourage the casual collectors. They live for the surge and sweep of the waves, literally straining their dinner from the sea.

Yes, ‘opihi are us, those of us not muscle-bound, not aggro, not rich or powerful, who don't wear body armor and masks, who don't have "complete immunity," who lately have been living lives of quiet determination hunkered down in our rocky crevices. Some of us are hoping the scans are clean, that there's someone to care for the kupuna while we work, or that if we're kupuna ourselves that we'll see our grandchildren grow up in a democracy to be proud of. We feel a kinship regardless of our station in life with the others who worry that the paycheck or benefit voucher will cover the rent, that the kids won't get bullied at school, and may actually learn something besides the cynicism of money and might makes right.

But this is not the hour when it pays to live like one ‘opihi. Not just because no matter how deep we burrow they will find us, eventually. Because that is no way to live, period. For ourselves, our families, for anyone. For our country.

And so for this Lunar New Year, let us go large, and live our lives and our beliefs, in public.

Read "Memoir of an ‘Opihi" by James Nakamura (and more!) at The Hawaiʻi Review of Books:

https://hawaiireviewofbooks.com/stories/memoirs-of-an-opihi

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