In "The Epic Tale of Hi'iakaikapoliopele," the first publication of the tale of Pele's sister in 100 years, there's a Kailua interlude. Two women sun themselves and pick 'ilima at Kawai Nui. A chant invokes Olomana. Men carry a canoe in Oneawa. A group walks the road to 'Ahuimanu. Anyone familiar with the area can picture the action happening in the ancient story.

"I loved reading about Kailua. I didn't know enough to know what an old, important place it is," says Maile Meyer, owner of Native Books. "I thought it was watermelon patches and pig farms."

For Meyer, the book, which has just come out in paperback and is lavishly illustrated by Solomon Enos, is a revelation.

"It's so wonderful to have more knowledge available to people," she says. From how to give someone a medicinal purge (it entails eating broiled potato and broiled taro leaves) to the documentation of 32 different rains, Hawaiian culture is immediate and alive in "The Epic Tale of Hi'iakaikapoliopele."

The valuable information is delivered in the context of the story of Pele's favorite younger sister, whose name means "Hi'iaka in the bosom of Pele." As the legend goes, when Pele fled her home in Tahiti after a family blowout, she cradled her youngest sister, so young she was still in an egg, against her chest as she rode to the Hawaiian archipelago.

It's been 100 years since the Hawaiian-language version appeared in print in definitive form, serialized over a two-year period in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Hawaii Aloha.

"Now I understand what the Hawaiian language newspapers mean to the community," says Meyer. "Prior to this, we weren't ready. We didn't have the sensitivity of language ... it was too dense and too deep; and now we can take it in ... we're reconnecting with substance that's just waiting there for us — the knowledge waiting for us in the newspapers."

The book is published under the Awaiaulu: Hawaiian Literature Project, started in 2004 by University of Hawai'i associate professor Puakea Nogelmeier and Dwayne Steel, the late businessman and philanthropist.

Awaiaulu's goal is to make accessible to the English-speaking public the mother lode of information Nogelmeier has been mining from Hawaiian-language newspapers, as part of his Hawaiian Language Newspaper Project.

Kalowena Komeiji, marketing and community relations specialist with Kamehameha Publishing, sees the work as more than a book.

"We're trying to work together to support and promote each other," says Komeiji.

"What do you do with all these young Hawaiian language students? How do you employ them besides just charter schools? Maybe this is the next industry for those students and scholars."

For more than two years, Nogelmeier, in collaboration with scholars Todd Sahoa Fukushima and Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, worked on the translation, getting the nuances right.

And the grueling work is hitting a nerve with an Island audience.

"Reading ('Hi'iaka') you kind of understand that it's the beginning of all this access and knowledge, the ability to know again our own places, our food, our gods and goddesses," says Meyer.

"It's profound. It's so not about scaring anyone. It's about finding your way to what you thought you lost."

Reach Lesa Griffith at lgriffith@honoluluadvertiser.com.