Book review
Tales of coming of age preserve Hawai'i's past

By Jolie Jean Cotton
Advertiser Staff Writer

These days, author Graham Salisbury is walking on air. His new novel for young adults, "Lord of the Deep," just arrived in bookstores, and it's already receiving highly favorable reviews nationally. As with all his previous books, this one is set in Hawai'i.

Graham Salisbury grew up in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island and Kailua, O'ahu. His stories focus on decisions adolescent boys face as they make the journey into manhood. Salisbury recalls growing up in the Islands as the best time of his life. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Salisbury's first book, "Blue Skin of the Sea," was published in 1992. "Under the Blood-Red Sun," "Shark Bait," and "Jungle Dogs" followed. Each has won several prestigious awards.

Salisbury speaks as he writes, with intensity and passion.

"It's an extreme honor for me to be able to write about the kids of Hawai'i, because the kids of Hawai'i, for ages and ages, have been reading about Mainland kids," Salisbury tells me.

In his work, however, Island youngsters "can read about themselves. And Mainland kids can read about Hawai'i kids, and they can see that they're not all that different."

With "Lord of the Deep," Salisbury continues to mold a comfortable literary niche for himself. He draws on his experience as a youth in the Islands to create incisive fictional stories about how hard it is for a boy to become a man.

"I think I still understand boys," he said during a quick trip here last month from his home in Oregon. "When I was an adolescent, I was a total idiot. Boys are idiots. It's part of what they're supposed to be."

	Book Review Teen's fishing trip takes unexpected twist
•	"LORD OF THE DEEP" by Graham Salisbury, Delacorte Press, $15.95, ages 10 and up
•	Thirteen-year-old Mikey Donovan is elated to be the new deck hand on his stepfather Bill's charter boat off the Kona coast. Mikey relishes learning all he can about fishing from Bill, whom he calls, "Lord of the deep," because he believes Bill is "the best deep-sea charter-fishing skipper there was." When two vulgar characters charter Bill's boat to catch a monster marlin, both Bill and Mikey are forced to make difficult decisions testing their personal integrity. Salisbury spins a moving, multi-layered coming-of-age story with electrifying moments of battle between anglers and big game fish.

"My primary objective in writing 'Blue Skin of the Sea' was to preserve, in words, the Kailua-Kona that I knew growing up, which was just paradise," Salisbury said.

""Kailua-Kona was such a simple, innocent little fishing village and I was there just before the boom hit. It was just wonderful."

Salisbury recalls that in boyhood, he never considered the impact of decisions he made. He says many boys today are no different.

"My whole point is that there are consequences to things we do. And if boys understand that, then they can make the decisions and they won't get into the kind of trouble that will really be detrimental to their lives," Salisbury said.

"When you come to a point in time where there's a decision to be made, your friends want you to do something, your parents want you to do something, the same one that was in 'Shark Bait,' what do I do? Do I go with my friend or do I go with my parents?" Salisbury asks. "Well if I could just get them to go inside and ask 'What's right?' that little voice that's in all of us will tell us what's right, if you just listen to it."

Salisbury adds, "I don't write these books to give that message, but that's my message, because that's what I think is really valuable."

Salisbury says for him writing is not only rewarding, it's therapeutic.

"Each story has some kind of a problem that probably has something to do with my own problems and my own life that I'm dealing with. I can approach it, study it, enrich it, understand it and have some closure" Salisbury said.

"And I think that the most fun part about writing and, I guess, rewarding is to do all this work and then go back after the book is published a couple of years later and read it and see all the things that I've missed, all the subtext that comes up that I didn't understand. Its quite amazing."

Salisbury is working on "Island Boys," a collection of short stories coming out with Wendy Lamb Books in the spring. He's also working on a companion novel to "Under the Blood-Red Sun," and he's writing a story set in Oregon.

"It's really a thrill for me to be able to have such a wide audience, telling them what it's like from my perspective growing up in Hawai'i," Salisbury said. "Someone like Lois-Ann Yamanaka, whose writing I adore, could give them a totally different perspective. But it's all the same, its all this rich stuff that Hawai'i has that the world is just beginning to see."