Product Description

From Kiana Davenport, the bestselling author of Song of the Exile and Shark Dialogues, comes another mesmerizing novel about her people and her islands. Told in spellbinding and mythic prose, House of Many Gods is a deeply complex and provocative love story set against the background of Hawaii and Russia. Interwoven throughout with the indelible portrait of a native Hawaiian family struggling against poverty, drug wars, and the increasing military occupation of their sacred lands.

Progressing from the 1960s to the turbulent present, the novel begins on the island of O’ahu and centers on Ana, abandoned by her mother as a child. Raised by her extended family on the “lawless” Wai’anae coast, west of Honolulu, Ana, against all odds, becomes a physician. While tending victims of Hurricane ‘Iniki on the neighboring island of Kaua’i, she meets Nikolai, a Russian filmmaker with a violent and tragic past, who can confront reality only through his unique prism of lies. Yet he is dedicated to recording the ecological horrors in his motherland and across the Pacific.

As their lives slowly and inextricably intertwine, Ana and Nikolai’s story becomes an odyssey that spans decades and sweeps the reader from rural Hawaii to the forbidding Arctic wastes of Russia; from the poverty-stricken Wai’anae coast to the glittering harshness of “new Moscow” and the haunting, faded beauty of St. Petersburg. With stunning narrative inventiveness, Davenport has created a timeless epic of loss and remembrance, of the search for family and identity, and, ultimately, of the redemptive power of love.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #408640 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-26
• Released on: 2007-06-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345481511
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
A family battles poverty, government indifference and each other in Davenport's rich third novel (Song of Exile). Ana's mother, the beautiful Anahola, fled the Hawaiian coastal town of Nanakuli, on Oahu, when Ana was still small for a new life on her own in San Francisco, leaving Ana to bring herself up in a house filled with wounded veteran uncles in an impoverished town riddled by drugs and teenage thugs. Determined not to become like her beloved but abused cousin, pregnant at 15 and stuck, Ana fights her way through college and medical school. Furious at her estranged mother, she nonetheless yearns for her, calling her California home just to hear her breathe. Leery of love and of the damaged men who populate her world, she finally opens her heart to Nikolai Volenko, a Russian filmmaker with a dangerous past, who's come to the Waianae coast to document the threat of a nearby weapons factory. When Niki is forced to return to Russia, Ana has to decide whether to accept her mother's help in finding the man she loves or retreat to the safety of the island she has never left. This is a lush, ambitious novel that delves deeply into familial conflict and forgiveness and offers a fascinating glimpse into the beauty and contradictions of native Hawaiian culture.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Written as two stories that come together in a beautiful love story, this novel will appeal to teens on many levels. It follows the life of Ana, raised in Hawaii by a family that includes uncles demoralized by the Vietnam War and addicted to drugs and despair, and women burdened by poverty and child rearing. Determined to break the cycle, Ana manages college and medical school with a ferocity fueled by anger at the mother who left her and by the loving support of her extended family. Nikolai was orphaned as a small child and left to roam the streets of St. Petersburg when his mother died while camping out near the jail where her husband was held as a political prisoner. The young people meet dramatically during a hurricane in Hawaii, and Ana becomes impressed by Nikolai's work as a documentary filmmaker passionately dedicated to exposing the manmade ecological havoc in Russia and in Hawaii. Well-drawn characterizations of the two principals as well as Ana's colorful relatives will capture readers, as will the vivid descriptions of the stark, frozen Russian countryside, its once majestic cities, and the contrasting lush islands of Hawaii.-Jackie Gropman, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Ana Kapakahi, the abandoned child of an ambitious mother, is raised in a household of ruined vets and women without husbands. She nourishes her anger and resentment toward her mother into adulthood, while in medical school, and during a bout with breast cancer, rebuffing every effort at reconciliation. Ana and her beloved cousin Lopaka--a returned Vietnam vet--are the first of their generation to attend college, promising to brighten the economic prospects for their large, unruly family even as their native Hawaiian paradise is threatened by nuclear testing. During a hurricane on the island of Kauai, Ana meets Niki, a Russian documentary filmmaker, and her perspective on the world, as seen from her tiny island and her close-knit community, changes drastically. They are two profoundly injured people from polar-opposite backgrounds, but their appreciation for the sanctity of the earth and the importance of culture to individual identity forms a powerful attraction. Davenport, author of the critically acclaimed Song of the Exile (1999), again works magic with evocative descriptions of place--lush Hawaii and frigid Russia--and poignant portraits of humans with all their flaws. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

"Silence is how we preserve that which is most sacred."
With her lush descriptions of the topography and the almost operatic rhythm of her language, Kiana Davenport establishes the setting of her newest novel--a "wild place, the untutored place, where the Grand Tutu of the coast, the rugged Wai'anae Mountains, watched over the generations," the last holdout of pure-blood Hawaiians on Oahu. Opening in 1964, the novel focuses on Ana Kapakahi, a young girl from the poor coastal village Nanakuli, who is being raised by her extended family, her mother having departed for the mainland and a better life. Many of the elders in her family and neighborhood adhere to the old spiritual and cultural traditions, and they resent the fact that much of the land in these mountains has been seized by the US military, ending the Hawaiians' traditional use of the land and despoiling their sacred burial places and shrines.

Davenport traces the life of the resilient Ana, from 1964 to the present, as she progresses through school, college, and medical school, a journey of immense hardship and stress, contrasting Ana's life with that of her mother, Anahola (also called Ana), who is living comfortably on the mainland. She also introduces a surprising new plot element by comparing and contrasting Ana's life with that of Nikolai Volenko, a young Russian in Moscow. The two come together as adults when Hurricane Iniki destroys the Hawaiian island of Kauai and Ana, as a physician, offers medical aid. Niki, a videographer on a one-year fellowship to the US, arrives to record the events for a documentary.

Though the author might have used her plot to set up simple love stories in which the cultural differences among various lovers complicate their lives, Davenport goes much further than this, thematically, providing several points of focus. The three love stories are all complicated by the effects of the polluted environments in which the characters have lived, and the author minces no words in assigning blame for this pollution. At the same time, she emphasizes the spiritual values which can sustain believers, adding color and depth to her story by including unique Hawaiian rituals, legends, and descriptions of sacred places.

Using the personal story of Ana and her mother to provide the emotional base of the novel, Davenport is largely successful combining these seemingly disparate ideas, ultimately producing a moving family saga, a series of love stories, a number of domestic tragedies, an environmental novel, a political commentary, and a spiritual coming-of-age. As the action moves back and forth among the themes and plot lines, the novel draws in the reader, as mesmerizing as a hula. n Mary Whipple

A story of love and family and the unsafe world created by the march of progress
I've becoming quite a fan of Kiana Davenport. Her themes are always about her native Hawaii. Her characters are symbolic as well as real. And her stories never fail to keep me up well past my bedtime. I read her latest book in a couple of days and just couldn't put it down. This was in spite of the fact that I generally knew what was coming. In fact, I welcomed it. Because, in the end, I knew there would be a happy resolution. And there was.

This is the story of a Ana, young native Hawaiian girl born in the 1960s. She's being raised by her extended family because her mother has deserted her. It's a house full of aunties and uncles and cousins who eke out a sparse living in rural Oahu, about a two-hour bus ride from the busy and bustling Honolulu. This is Ana's story, but it is also the story an unpleasant chapter in Hawaii's history, that of nuclear testing on its beaches, with the resultant illnesses of the people and devastation of the environment.

Against all odds, Ana grows up to be a doctor. She is not a happy person though. She has been shaped by the loss of her mother and is always angry. Even when she becomes ill, and her mother returns, she continues living behind emotional defenses.

But there is another character in this story. And, unlike Ms. Davenport's previous books, this character is not a native Hawaiian. He comes from far-away Russia and has experienced anguishes that make Ana's story pale by comparison. When Stalin came to power, this man's father was sent to a labor camp in the frozen north. His mother followed him, living in a house of ice with other women whose husbands were in the camp. During a secret visit to his father, Nicolai was conceived and the hardships he endured as a baby made me wince in horror. Later, he becomes a street urchin, starving and abused. However, he somehow manages to become a documentary film maker. And he specializes in filming the awful results of his country's nuclear testing.

Yes, he comes to Hawaii. He meets Ana. But this is not a simple love story. There are twists and turns and the reader is forced to view the unsafe world created by the Cold War and the march of progress.

I loved this book and couldn't put it down. I am fascinated by books about the Hawaiian people. And I am equally fascinated by books about the frozen north. Put these both together in a fast-paced story which also has a message, and I'm hooked.

Lush is the word
If a book can be described in a single word, lush would be the one for Davenport's novel, House of Many Gods. Her stunning gift for description of place is evident not only in the passion she infuses into writing about her green Hawaii, where the part-Hawaiian author lives, but also to the passages putting us into the faded glory of St. Petersburg and the madness of modern Moscow. She takes us from "ancient serrated valleys, green velvet cliffs, then, tiny hidden beaches like opals" to "a room that could be crossed in eleven steps, life lived on an intimate scale" while outside are "the spires of St. Basil's cathedral, like giant swirling Dairy Queens." With Davenport, you are there.

For those not familiar with Hawaiian history, Davenport weaves in just enough background without slowing down the complex plot-and it is a big one, spanning generations, military presence, and several love stories in language that reaches poetry at times.

Although there are several stories interwoven here, the complicated relationship between Ana, the main character, and her mother, Anahola, a single mother who left her child by choice with family and moved to San Francisco, is particularly compelling-and authentic. Davenport is a marvelous storyteller. --Lorraine Dusky