![]() ![]() She is what Hawaiians call "hapa" – of mixed race – and suffers rejection by a series of would-be parents who consider adapting her, until she is matched with the Watanabes, a Japanese couple who want to complete their young brood with a girl. Ruth is happy at the orphanage, cares deeply for stray cats and dogs, but her youth is marked by a strong sense of otherness. There she fell in love with and married a Japanese man, Kenji Utagawa, but the infected pair were forced to give up their infant daughter, Ruth, to prevent infecting the baby.īrennert sensitively sketched the Utagawas’ heartbreak and dignity in the face of medical and cultural reality, and “Daughter of Moloka’i” picks up the narrative thread in 1917, when the healthy Ruth, barely a year old, is brought to the Catholic sanctuary of Kapi’olani Home. “Moloka’i” introduced us to Rachel Kalama, a Hawaiian child who contracted leprosy in the Honolulu of the 1890s and was deported to the quarantined leper settlement of Kalaupapa on the island of Moloka’i. ![]() ![]() Martin’s Press, 320 pp., released Tuesday), Alan Brennert does more than deliver the long-awaited sequel to has 2003 bestseller, “Moloka’i.” Unforced and uncontrived, Brennert’s polished work extends an evocative, emotionally rich family saga to an important moment in American history, and the readership he won with the first book will be grateful he took his time. With “Daughter of Moloka’i" (★★★1/2 out of four St. ![]()
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