"THE COLONY" BY JOHN TAYMAN; SCRIBNER, $27.50

"Dear friend, I think Hawaii is too touchy on matters of truth."

— Jack London to Lorrin A. Thurston, as quoted in "The Colony."

This is not a book about Father Damien. The beatified Belgian martyr plays large in its pages, fighting valiantly to save his many patients, and, ultimately, himself, from despair against long illness and longer odds. But, with all respect to Damien, we in Hawai'i know that already, as our many memorials to him attest.

Perhaps the most devoted will consider John Tayman's "The Colony" a slight to the soon-to-be saint, but it is in the editorial decision to make this a book about the whole of the community at Kalaupapa that Tayman's story transcends traditional histories and takes flight as one of the most riveting documents of Hawai'i history to emerge in years.

Tayman's book, the product of three years' research on Moloka'i and O'ahu, is culled from a staggering array of sources, from 19th-century personal correspondence to old newspaper clippings to 21st-century interviews with Kalaupapa survivors. Tayman's impressive research and spare prose style allow him to stand back and let the exiles themselves tell this chilling story of abandonment and its aftermath. "The Colony" will appeal to students of history and those who simply love a great yarn.

It's a book about a young Hawaiian family, riddled with the misunderstood Hansen's disease, whose flight for freedom led to a military standoff deep in Kaua'i's Kalalau Valley. It's a book about a hapa-haole legislator, among Hawai'i's most popular socialites during David Kala-kaua's reign, who went from drinking companion of the king and Mark Twain to inmate and then overseer of the world's most desolate prison. It's a book about often well-meaning physicians and experts, whose inadequate knowledge about the disease led them to issue virtual death sentences after the most cursory of examinations. Many of those who lived and died on Moloka'i had never been touched by leprosy. It is a book about a child born in exile, who, despite having Hansen's disease and adolescent blindness, could not be held back from an academic career at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.

It's also a book about us. In some sense, we as a community have probably allowed our pride in Damien's sacrifices to inoculate us against the ugly human failures that made them necessary in the first place.

While the humanity and essential courage of people like former Gov. Lawrence Judd do great honor to Hawai'i, the actions of many others we should be rightly ashamed of. Ashamed not because we are personally guilty or because shame in itself is worthwhile, but because if today's headlines are any guide, we have not entirely learned our lesson. Hawai'i's treatment of various stigmatized groups — of special-needs students, of the mentally ill, of gay and lesbian teenagers in state custody and state schools — has been the subject of frequent and sustained federal concern and litigation. Today's Hawai'i is unmarked by Hansen's disease, but we remain tainted by fear, shame or whatever it is that causes us to abandon and then forget those we do not accept or understand. "The Colony" is a stark reminder of the consequences of that neglect.

As reported in The Advertiser last month, Ann and Makia Malo (who appears in the book) and others associated with the Kalaupapa community are unhappy with the book, citing inaccuracies and unethical practices on Tayman's part.

Despite this controversy surrounding "The Colony," ultimately Tayman's history of the colonies at Kalawao and Kalaupapa is the story of human courage, and survival. Its voice is that of the many people who were sent to die on a rocky prison, and through force of will, made that prison into a home.

Hawai'i-raised Ragnar Carlson is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.