Molokai, Book Review

Book Review and Comments
“Molokai” by Alan Brennert

When Rachel Kalama, a five year old girl, found a spot on her skin, “Molokai” began describing a saga of a dreadful disease that hit the Hawaiian Islands. Leprosy was a feared disease with a cure unknown. For Rachel and thousands later, Molokai unfolds the sadness and the bitterness in a life of isolation.

On the island of Molokai, on a remote peninsula known as Kalaupapa, Alan Brennert takes us back to ancient Hawaii and a life without promise, a people faced with the inevitable, death. Even more difficult was living.

Kalaupapa, a place not known to the world, juts out from a island in the Hawaiian chain. Its beauty of a tropical land, with breaking waves, blue skies, and trade winds, is kept from the world by towering cliffs. It becomes a forbidden land, a history not fully told, and not understood. Molokai opens the door to Hawaii’s history, the plight of so many, the goodness and sacrifice of dedicated nuns and amongst the stricken people themselves.

Molokai is a literary weaving of human emotions, Shakespearean in many ways, a search for normalcy where there isn’t normalcy, fact with fiction, ancient Hawaiian culture layered with cultures from other regions, and the search for peace in human turmoil.

The Author’s Perspective

Alan Brennert says that when he went to Hawaii twenty four years ago, he fell in love with the islands. He felt he was coming home. He states that nearly everything he wrote was based on fact yet this in a context of a novel. Rachel Kalama is entirely fiction, but others are actual people—Brother Dutton, Mother Marianne, Ambrose Hutchinson, Lawrence Judd, J.D. McVeigh, Doctors Oliver and Swift. Leilani is based on a medical history.

Kalaupapa

Since 1865, when Kamehameha’s “Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy,” about 8,000 people, men, women, and children, had been exiled to the peninsula. In 1969 the law was repealed. Leprosy is now termed Hansen’s disease. In 1874, a Norwegian physican, G. Armauer Hansen discovered the cause of leprosy, a bacillus (rod shaped bacterium). Hansen disease, with treatment, has been arrested and the medical colony on Kalaupapa has been closed.

To any reader who has a fascination with the history of Hawaii and its people, this is a book for you to read.

The Shack, Book Review

Books List – A Commentary

THE SHACK by William Paul Young

I must admit, I began reading the book twice and it didn’t catch my interest. I am not one who easily turn to novels to read unless they have an interesting line, a lesson for life, or brings a historical context..

For the third time, I started to read the book. So many people told me how they enjoyed the book. I was told, “After you read it, tell us what you think.” My wife, a librarian said, “You need to give it time.” Many churches were having group studies on this book so my curiosity was aroused.

The book first caught my attention when Mack’s young daughter was kidnapped. It turned into suspense, a mystery, and problem to solve. Life’s innocence was now caught in the element of evil and a theological question. Something beautiful, three children enjoying the day with dad, takes a turn. The author carefully builds the story into theological reflection, images, and internal struggles. These define life as we know it. The author creatively weaves many threads into a moving story, raising as many questions as there are answers.

So often we hear the phrase, “out of the box.” Theologically and biblically, the author develops a story, out of the box. It has orthodox premises of beliefs, but he goes beyond. This is refreshing, but for those in the box, it is disturbing. Some reviews raise the questions, is he biblically accurate? Is it theologically correct? The author moves into biblically understanding then moves out, stretching love and grace to another level. The perception of God is a surprise, curious on one hand, way out on the other. The point of the book is not to be stuck here.

The Shack, in this form, appears to me as a modern parable. It searches the inner emotions of a tragedy, seeking grace to lighten the spirit. Two options are offered, vengeance, endless resentment in tragedy and loss, or the way of forgiveness. The author captures the teaching of Jesus, not in ancient images, but in a new parable.

The author brings to this story many resources, his theological perceptions, his own struggle dealing with life and tragedy, learnings he has gained from a missionary experience and adjusting to different cultures, and new theological understandings. As he said, “I wrote this for my children;” to help them in their own faith journey. Remember, this is a novel, a tool an author can design and create as he pleases. An author is like an artist, he can move trees wherever he wants, create a picture like a Picasso or a Mona Lisa.

I found The Shack more enlightening than I first thought. It’s good reading.

November 8, 2009