The Pōhaku

An aging woman unburdens herself of a story she’s carried for decades about her family’s links to a secret history of Hawai`i in the muddled sophomore effort from Hakes (Hula). In August 1992, teenager Mo`opuna falls at Queen’s Bath, a treacherous tide pool on Kaua`i, and slips into a coma. She’s visited in the hospital by her grandmother, who tells Mo`opuna a story beginning with the 1777 birth of Maui royal child Ka`ahumanu, whose stillborn twin, known as the “stone child,” becomes a sacred stone called the pōhaku. Ka`ahumanu is raised by nursemaid Kaluaua, Mo`opuna’s ancestor, who’s entrusted with protecting the pōhaku. Decades later, with the arrival of more and more foreigners to the Hawaiian islands, Kaluaua sends the pōhaku to California with her granddaughter, to keep it from being discovered by colonists. As Mo`opuna’s grandmother reveals in her monologue, she is now the keeper of the pōhaku, and the duty will fall to Mo`opuna if she recovers. Hakes successfully evokes the grandmother’s conflicted feelings about her burden, which contributed to her strained relationship with her daughter as well as Mo`opuna, but the novel is hard to follow, due in part to the jumble of Hawaiian terms and the drawn-out yet sketchy historical details, particularly of California’s 19th-century development. It’s a mixed bag. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (Feb.)