Lisa Linn Kanae

Softcover, 179 pp

Collection of stories written with humor and compassion that give voice to characters who find themselves at crossroad moments where past informs present, young teach old, and love can mean holding on or letting go. In “The Steersman,” a novice paddler shares her tempestuous yet life-affirming introduction to the tradition of outrigger canoe paddling: “…in the canoe, we were nameless. We were numbers, and when we weren't numbers, we were random expletives—scrub, donkey, idiot, stupid, jackass, lame ass, dumb ass….” In “Born Again Hawaiian,” a young husband discovers how the personal impacts the political when his activist wife shows him how he must fight for what he loves most. And what happens when three local women take in the opera? “Dat suckah Pavarotti—he get um.”

The stories in this collection are familiar, like family. And like the father and daughter in the title story, the stories in ISLANDS LINKED BY OCEAN are “told and retold until the words swim through the listener's veins and turn into blood.”