Set in Hana, Maui, in a natural world both beautiful and dangerous, this poignant multi-generation story asks T.S. Eliot's "permanent questions" – what is goodness, truth, and love – as city clashes with country, youth with age, decadence with innocence.
Old Nani-lei lives in Hana-lani, her family home in the rainforest of rural Maui.She looks after her grandson Henry, 52, and his daughter Lucy, 6, who have returned to Hana from Berkeley after the death of Maria, Henry's wife.Henry and Maria, professors, had been working on A History of Ethics, and now Henry tries to finish it.
City girl Meredith Campbell, 36, fast-paced, self-centered, and beautiful, believes her body will ensure her happiness. When she loses her job and finds her lover unfaithful, she flies to Maui, sure he will follow, but her plane crashes near Hana-lani. As Nani, Henry, and Lucy help Meredith recover, their worlds collide, and Meredith is forced to slow down and reflect. The reclusive Henry falls in love with Meredith and is pulled out of his grief, but she merely uses him to pass the time.
Nani tells of old Hawaii through word and dance, and prays in her village church that her grandson be healed of the grief-demons. They picnic by the pounding sea at the foot of the volcano Haleakala, in a natural world both beautiful and dangerous. Henry speaks of T.S. Eliot's "permanent questions" – what is goodness, truth, love? What makes a civilization civil?
When Lucy has a terrible accident, Henry is forced to act on his words, and Meredith must come face-to-face with her own life choices.
Professional Reviews
Highly Satisfying - Sensitively Written
In Hana-Lani, Christine Sunderland serves up a compelling medley of characters – four very different lives entwined by unexpected circumstances – all set within the unpredictable embrace of Hawaii itself.
Ancient Nani-lei, wise matriarch of Hana, keeps the old family home of Hana-lani with all its history and cultural traditions. The bookish Henry, her adopted grandson, has returned from Berkeley after the death of his beloved wife, Maria, bringing with him their six-year-old hearing-impaired daughter, Lucy. As Henry has buried himself in grief, trying to finish the scholarly work he and Maria had intended to produce together, old Nani pours her ample love on both him and Lucy, but she is coming to the end of her strength and Henry does not seem to notice either her growing weakness or his daughter’s need for him – only his own grief.
Into this stalemate, an unlikely change-agent literally drops from the sky. Meredith Campbell is, according to San Francisco magazine, “one of the most eligible women in town.” Stunningly beautiful and committed to taking care of Number One, her life is centered around smug pleasure-seeking and captivating handsome, wealthy men. When her most recent lover leaves her, she flies to Hawaii and, through a series of mishaps with the capricious Hawaiian weather, survives a small plane crash near Nani-lei’s home and is taken in by the old lady, who undertakes to nurse her back to health.
In the weeks that follow, each of these characters influences, and is influenced by, the others, and as they grow and change, issues of faith and faithfulness, family, love, and self-sacrifice are explored. I found myself pondering the role of suffering and sacrifice in human spiritual growth, and it seemed to me that Hawaii itself, with its expected pleasures and shockingly unexpected dangers, presented a metaphor for the God Who guides our lives and knows the right mix of both enjoyment and trauma for each of us to achieve the maturity He wants for us.
Hana-lani is highly satisfying as a story, giving us full characters who struggle, each in his own way, through challenging circumstances. It is also satisfying on a spiritual level, bringing the deep questions of permanent values into the relationships and experiences of fallible and often wrong-headed people. I would recommend Hana-lani to anyone who will enjoy a sensitively written contemporary story that packs a profound spiritual punch.
Susan Prudhomme, Author of Ambrose and The Forest. Visit Susan at www.SusanPrudhomme.com
Hana-lani, a Novel
Losing her job and discovering that her boyfriend is unfaithful, Meredith Campbell decides to leave
city life for an idyllic vacation on Maui. This is a vacation that she thinks will have others looking to
pamper and cater to her every whim. She also hopes that her absence might make her errant
boyfriend come running back to reunite with her. Being in a beautiful place that will also allow her
to show off her gorgeous physical assets, she thinks that everything should go off without a hitch.
For Meredith, beauty is all about what is on the outside.
When Meredith is involved in a plane crash, her plans are taken away from her. Instead of being at a
beautiful resort, she finds herself at Hana-lani, the home of Nani-Lei and her family. Nani-lei is an
old woman, who carries a great deal of wisdom. In her house is Henry, who is still grieving from the
loss of his wife Maria. Maria was Nani-Lei’s granddaughter. Henry is focused on finishing writing a
book that his wife began. His six-year-old daughter, Lucy, is also living with them.
Meredith ends up at Hana-lani because the clinics are too full. Meredith needs a place to recover
from injuries that she sustained in the plane crash. At first, Meredith does not appreciate the beauty
and healing powers of this place. She feels the need to hide out because her face is scarred. Not yet
recognizing the importance of inner beauty, she cannot go back to face her superficial friends. The
house also has a phone that works intermittently. Time off from the outside world gives Meredith a
chance to reflect upon how she has been living her life. Her conversations with Nani-lei also teach
her a great deal. Finding that she is also growing closer to Lucy and Henry, the three begin to start
healing in their own ways.
Once again, Meredith is handed an unexpected tragic situation. This time, however, she finds herself
coping in a different way. Dealing with the pain of the situation, she finds herself better able to
handle it, and she also sees the value of the lessons that she has learned from her experiences on
Hana-lani. Meredith is no longer the same person that came to the islands.
“Hana-lani” is a beautifully written story. I have always found the islands of Hawaii to carry a
special magic about them. In this story, not only the beauty of the place helps others heal, the people
do as well. Reading about Meredith’s journey left me with the feeling that we should all stop and
take a look at our lives and not only see where we are headed, but how we are allowing ourselves to
get there.
Reviewed by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views (1/11)
Hana-lani
Sexy, sweet, and touching are three words I’d use to describe the fantastic novel, Hana-lani, by the talented author Christine Sunderland. There is a definite theme of hope and the possibility for redemption that runs through the novel, but Hana-lani’s tone never gets heavy. Reading it is like breathing in a fresh breath of island air, and its depiction of rural Hawaiian life in Hana- lani, the old family home of one of the novel’s main characters, old Nani Lei, is guaranteed to lift your spirits and brighten your day. Materialistic and beautiful Meredith Campbell, 36, who might have stepped right out of the TV program Sex In the City, seems to come from an entirely different world than Nani-Lei, her widowed 52-year-old grandson, Henry, and his six-year-old daughter, Lucy. What will it take for these two people, Meredith and Henry, to meet each other, fall in love, and to change their lives for the better?
City girl Meredith Campbell seems to have it all: a great paying job, a rockin’ body, and a handsome lover who is a doctor. Her life in San Francisco is sweet, but Meredith is also very self-centered, and believes her body will ensure her happiness. She doesn’t like being around children, she thinks going to visit her father in a Florida home is a waste of time. Also, she thinks, and past experience in general has shown, that with her attractive body and by flirting with men she can get almost anything she wants. She’s not an evil person, but she is one who knows what she wants and is not above using her natural charms to get it.
One day, her world starts to unravel. She loses her job, and discovers Nick, the doctor who is also her live-in boyfriend, in her bed with his ex-wife. Meredith decides to get away from it all, and though Nick has cheated on her, she has fantasies of his tracking her down in Hawaii and riding shirtless up to her on a beach. At first, Meredith seemed too shallow to me, and I didn’t especially like her character, to be honest. As I continued to read, though, I became more and more intrigued with her character and wondered what could possibly happen to change her for the better and to turn her life around.
It turns out that it took the small plane she’s in to crash, killing the drug-running pilot of it whom she’s had sex with the night before, to begin heading her life in a different direction. The expected and anticipated arrival of Nick never comes, it’s the rainy season, there’s not much for her to do, and she seeks to leave and return to San Francisco and look for a different job. The trouble is, all flights have been canceled due to the weather. A shady guy she meets offers her a flight in return for sex, and though she is not really attracted to the dude, she agrees to the arrangement because she wants off the island so badly and doesn’t care about any potential consequences. Both engines fail, and the plane crashes, despite the pilot’s efforts to glide it in for a landing.
Fortunately for Meredith, the plane crashes near Hana-lani. Lucy notices a “wisp of smoke,” curling into the air across the acres of field surrounding the house, and she leads her Nani tutu (grandmother) to the smoldering wreckage of the plane. There are not the most advanced medical facilities on the island, but though Meredith is unconscious for a few days and is cut on her face and thigh, her injuries don’t seem all that severe. Nani tutu has her brought to Hana-lani to personally care for her there, while she recovers.
Henry is a professor of history who is on a sabbatical to work on a book his deceased wife, Maria, had planned on writing and getting published. He is lost in his many shelves of books, and just wants to concentrate on researching and writing the book, as a way to honor Maria’s memory, if nothing else. He tolerates Meredith’s presence, but at first, doesn’t want much to do with her, believing (rightly, at the time) that she is shallow. How can he find himself again, and deal with the terrible loss he’s suffered at the death of his wife?
Hana-lani is a beautifully written, poignant novel about vastly different worlds colliding. Its descriptions of Hawaii will make you want to take the next flight to the islands to see for yourselves their beauty. Also, I really enjoyed the quotations the author, Christine Sunderland, uses from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” He is one of my favorite poets, though I’m more familiar with his other poems, like “The Wasteland.” Hana-lani is a novel that rises above most romance novels, and is a work of literature that I enjoyed reading. It’s still light-hearted enough and a fun enough read to appeal to anyone who loves the Romance genre, though. I highly recommend this novel. Check out Hana-lani today!
Douglas R. Cobb, Bestsellerworld.com
The bulk of the collection is eight short stories that are set in yesteryear. The compilation is filled out with four entertaining fantasy pieces and three poems.
Part Three in the Mu Series - Sarah Thompson reluctantly abandons her desperate search for her soul mate on Maui and returns to her Montana hometown. Her brother has had a terrible accident...
