Posted on: Sunday, September 8, 2002

BOOK REVIEW
'Hawaiian Girls' weaves mystery, family into story

By Wanda Adams
Advertiser Staff Writer

SCHOOL FOR HAWAIIAN GIRLS, By Georgia Ka'apuni McMillen. 1stBooks Library, paper, $22.95

They say naming something gives it power. But sometimes not speaking of something lends it even more weight.

This is one of the themes explored in Georgia Ka'apuni McMillen's believable and deftly paced first novel, "School for Hawaiian Girls," which begins with an event that will ripple through four generations of the Kaluhi family — the murder of a beautiful and accomplished young woman.

The family's struggle to put aside what has happened to them reveals something about the nature and importance of remembering and the cost of forgetting, or trying to forget.

In Hawai'i in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the indigenous culture was in the process of being all but subsumed by Western ways, many Hawaiians found it safer, and less painful, not to talk about things that the haole couldn't understand or wouldn't approve of. Anyone who has grown up here knows of such kapu stories: the cave in the mountains we know about but don't visit, the child that was hanai'd and is not discussed, the puzzling birth certificate that seems to indicate that Uncle isn't really Uncle.

"School for Hawaiian Girls," self-published under the 1stBooks Library print-on-demand imprint, is appealing right from the front cover, with its resonant period photo of a girl holding an 'ukulele.

Then there is the title, with its layers of meaning. "Hawaiian School for Girls" refers to the setting of the book's opening, in 1922: a girls' school near Kea'au on the Big Island, roughly modeled after the real-life Kohala Girls' Seminary.

"School for Girls" sounds so innocent, sweet and safe, a place where young ladies are formed by means of elocution lessons, stitchery classes and penmanship. But the title also hints at the harsh lessons the 20th century has to teach Hawaiians in general, and members of the Kaluhi family in particular. This is especially so for the women: Bernie, the sister left behind; Haunani, the lost daughter; Moani, the granddaughter who makes her own way; Pu, who will bring a new generation into a different world.

McMillen, a Maui lawyer who grew up on O'ahu but whose family has North Kohala roots, said the seed for this book was a family story about which she had long been curious: that one of her grandmother's sisters had been murdered as a young woman. "Of all the childhood stories I could have focused on, this one probably grabbed my attention the most because I knew it was off-limits — and therefore most compelling," McMillen said.

"We're that happy Hawaiian family that you're always hearing about," sneers Moani at one point, and there is as much pain as anger in her outburst. But in this clear-eyed assessment, and the woman who makes it, is also the seed of hope for the Kaluhis. This book has something to say about choices; yes, events impinge on us, but we can choose how we will respond. Moani elects a different way than her elders. She will not keep secrets; she will see that the children know what they need to know, and that some kind of family is salvaged.

Despite its dark mysteries and knotty family relationships, "School for Hawaiian Girls" reads easily and almost joyfully: There is pleasure in the reading of a book wherein the characters are so well drawn, the language so well chosen, the action so flowing. There's a good story here that overreaches the murder mystery, a bitter-sweet experience of a family shaped by the pressures that have shaped Hawai'i.