Shark Dialogues - Softcover

Davenport, Kiana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452274583 ISBN 13: 9780452274587

Publisher: Plume, 1995

Synopsis

“Compares with Toni Morrison.”—Glamour
 
Beginning with the fateful meeting of a nineteenth-century Yankee sailor and the runaway daughter of a Tahitian chief, and sweeping over a century and a half of passionate, turbulent Hawaiian history, Shark Dialogues takes its place as the first novel to do justice to the rich heritage and cruel conflicts of the beautiful and beleaguered islands and their people. Surreal, provocative, erotic, magical, meaningful, and supremely wise, it is a tale of islanders and invaders, of victors and victims, of queens and whores, of lepers and healers. And at its center are Pono, the magnificent pure-blooded matriarch and seer, and her four mixed-blood granddaughters seeking to come to terms with the contradictions of their ancestries and the hungers of their hearts. Their loves, their hates, the bonds joining them, and the furies possessing them are interwoven with ancient legends and lore of the islands whose past offers their salvation and whose future is their fate. Kiana Davenport has written a major contribution to the literature of the Pacific Rim—a great reading experience both brilliantly contemporary in its form and timeless in its illumination.
 
“A giant, image-fevered, luxuriant saga of a Hawaiian family… powerful, memorable, intoxicating.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Complex, resonant… handles the sweep of history and the nuance of the personal equally well… Sensuous.”—San Francisco Chronicle

About this title

About the Author

KIANA DAVENPORT is descended from a full-blooded Native Hawaiian mother, and a Caucasian father from Talladega, Alabama. Her father, Braxton Bragg Davenport, was a sailor in the U.S. Navy, stationed at Pearl Harbor, when he fell in love with her mother, Emma Kealoha Awaawa Kanoho Houghtailing. On her mother's side, Kiana traces her ancestry back to the first Polynesian settlers to the Hawaiian Islands who arrived almost two thousand years ago from Tahiti and the Tuamotu's. On her father's side, she traces her ancestry to John Davenport, the puritan clergyman who co-founded the American colony of New Haven, Connecticut in 1638.

Kiana is the author of the internationally bestselling novels SHARK DIALOGUES, SONG OF THE EXILE, HOUSE OF MANY GODS, THE SPY LOVER, and THE SOUL AJAR.

kianadavenport.com

Reviews

Four women are called together by their domineering grandmother, who recounts the epic history of their Hawaiian family.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452274583
• ISBN 13: 9780452274587
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512