kawai strong washburn sharks in the time of saviors

Noa is drenched with attention from his parents, at the expense of their other children: Dean, his athletic older brother, and their younger sister, Kaui. Soon enough, Noa’s healing powers develop and he starts bringing in even more money by dispensing health to those burdened with an assortment of ailments. When news of the incident spreads across the island and makes Noa a local hero, his poor family is feted with donation checks and free food and clothing from well-wishers. Washburn’s depiction of that rescue is as vivid as it is splendid, reminiscent of the famous trickle of blood that flowed down the streets in “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” And as in García Márquez’s work, the wonders and woes of being part of a community take center stage here too. As everyone starts panicking, a shiver of sharks surrounds him and rescues him from drowning.

This happens for him at just 7 years old, while on vacation with his family, when he falls off a boat and into the Pacific. Like any human designated as a chosen one, Noa will eventually have to reveal his true nature to the masses he has come to save. The novel opens in 1995, as a mother, Malia, is telling her son Noa that at his birth, “the Kingdom of Hawai’i had long been broken,” and “the gods were hungry for change.” The change, Malia believed, would be Noa, who was conceived on a beach just as a parade of long-dead kings was marching with torches up a ridge, in their direction. His characters live in a modern yet mystical version of the archipelago, one whose essence no conqueror can ever fully eradicate. But Washburn has no interest in the Hawaii of resorts and honeymoons, thank goodness. The characters in Kawai Strong Washburn’s singular debut novel, “Sharks in the Time of Saviors,” live in a place with a name: Hawaii. Those first humans to walk the earth felt the presence of things unseen, heard the whispers of spirits and feared nothing, for they knew life and death were intertwined and the dead were a part of them - their past, present and future. A time when no separation existed between our forebears and the trees and rivers and mountains that surrounded them. There once was a time when places had no names. SHARKS IN THE TIME OF SAVIORS By Kawai Strong Washburn

Kawai strong washburn sharks in the time of saviors