Writer draws from real-life boys-to-men experiences

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Book Editor

Graham Salisbury's boyhood in Hawai'i evokes a more innocent time, which the author uses as a backdrop for his stories. Associated Press library photo • 2000

Granted, it is an adolescence of another time — the mid-20th century, when everyone spent the better part of the day and all summer barefoot, when cigarettes and speeding cars were parents' greatest worries, when boys roved in small, friendly packs across the landscape, fishing, surfing, camping and hanging out, and you didn't have to be home until Mom started sounding really huhu as she yelled out the back door.

"My youth was full of wonder and stupidity," said Salisbury, who lives in Oregon now, but returns to the Islands frequently. "Hawai'i was far more innocent than it is today. And I was an idiot. But I loved every sweet moment of it. As I say in 'Island Boyz,' I would not have traded places with anyone, not even God."

Salisbury's latest release is "Island Boyz" (Wendy Lamb Books, hardback, $16.95), a collection of short stories written over a period of years, drawn from his youth on O'ahu and the Big Island. He is well known for "Blue Skin of the Sea," "Under the Blood-Red Sun," Shark Bait" and "Jungle Dogs," each one an award winner.

This collection comes off as a bit closer to the bone and blood than some of the previous stories, perhaps because, Salisbury said, he drew heavily from his own life: "I took some jewel, some gem or painful image from my life and built a fiction around it."

"Doi Store Monkey," for example, a story that will strike painful and guilty chords in many, grew out of a time when he and some other high schoolers treated a schoolmate badly. "What then seemed ordinary and acceptable now seems way over the top," Salisbury said.

Readers will find delicious (and G-rated) first love in "Angel-Baby," a goodly dose of humor ("Forty Bucks" and "Frankie Diamond is Robbing Us Blind") and some heavy issues ("Waiting for the War").

Salisbury's world is gone but still relevant because the issues raised remain the very ones that young people — especially young men — continue to tackle: an inability to articulate amid conflicting emotions, the painful transition to adulthood, peer pressure and parent expectation, having to learn things the hard way and a certain "Three Stooges" idiocy that seems still to afflict the school yard.