Showing posts with label Hana-Lani. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hana-Lani. Show all posts

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Author Interview with Christine Sunderland



Today we're talking with Christine Sunderland, author of Hana-lani


FQ: You obviously know and love Hawaii. What is your connection with Maui?


I have had the opportunity to visit Hana, Maui and other locations in Hawaii many times over the last twenty years, and have been impressed with the welcoming spirit of the people, their sense of family, history, and faith I have found there.


FQ: Nani-lei is such a warm and inspiring character. Is she based on someone you are lucky enough to know?


Nani-lei is a blend of many elderly women I have been so very fortunate to know, primarily, I would add, in my church life. These women have given me so much and I continue to learn from these generations that go before me.
Flying to Hana



FQ: Meredith's experience at Hana-lani causes her to think about what truly matters in life. What is at the top of your list?


I would say family, faith, church, and making every day count, searching for what is true and not merely fashionable or politically correct.


FQ: Meredith's story is too familiar these days. In what ways can all of us be like Nani-lei and her family, bringing hope to those who, like Meredith, are alone?


I think we can all slow down and take the time to listen to and love one another. We begin with our family members – husband, wife, children. Then we consider friends and those who cross our path day to day. Every person is worthy of respect and love, and the gift of time, of paying attention, is probably the greatest gift to those alone. Of course giving one's time means sacrificing one's own time, being a little less selfish, a little more self-less.
Hana Bay
FQ: Henry and Maria's project, A History of Ethics, seems to be a topic you have thought much about. Is this a side project of yours?


Wananalua Congregational Church
I have long been concerned about how we decide what is right and wrong. With the demise of the Judeo-Christian ethical influence in the public square, our culture has been hard pressed to determine what authorities to use to decide right and wrong. Abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, cloning, the definition of marriage, are questions of serious moral impact for many of us, as well as the boundaries of free speech and the parameters of artistic expression.

Fagan's Cross, Hana



FQ: Do you share Henry's love of poetry? Which poets, along with T.S. Eliot, do you admire?


I love the poetic more than poetry itself – the phrase or metaphor that catches some otherwise indescribable truth about our humanity. I admire greatly Gerald Manley Hopkins, Shakespeare, Elizabeth Browning, among others. The Psalms are wonderful expressions of man's yearnings and angst as well as joyful and thankful moments. Poetry helps express who we are, gives us voice. My sister Barbara Budrovich is developing into a fine poet, catching unique family moments we experience as women and mothers.


FQ: Without giving away the ending of the book, I will say that it was not the “happily ever after” ending I was expecting. Did you know as you were writing the novel that it would end this way?


Hasegawa General Store, Hana
I knew it would have to end with a degree of realism, since I didn't want to write a "romance." I wasn't sure about the specifics, but the ending became clear as the characters became more real, and I soon knew what they would do, even what they needed to do, to reflect the themes of the novel. So I wanted the ending to be both challenging and yet hopeful.

To learn more about Hana-lani please visit our website and read the review at: Feathered Quill Book Reviews.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Friday Finds


Friday Finds is hosted
























All Eyes: A Memoir of Deafness In Bainy Cyrus's All Eyes, she tells about her life growing up in both the deaf and the hearing world. Bainy first attended Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, MA, where she learned to speak and struggled with language development. It was typical for a deaf child to cope with delayed English language in the 1960s and 1970s. After seven years at Clarke, Bainy began to face difficulties in regular school but eventually overcame obstacles in the hearing world, at times with humor. She also relates the importance of her lifelong friendships with two girls Cheryl and Diane she met at Clarke, and how the different paths that they took influenced her as an adult.


Paradise Lost The highly anticipated sequel to This Side of Paradise-which Kirkus heralds as an "an entertaining, suspenseful thriller"-Paradise Lost delivers the same chilling scenarios and head-scratching secrets that fans expect from author Steven L. Layne. After a summer break, former wallflower Chase Maxfield returns to school with a new found confidence to match his sudden, yet classic, good looks. But Jack Barrett suspects something sinister is behind Chase's unexpected transformation, and his skepticism only grows as other eerie events occur. When Jack's grandmother is mysteriously poisoned, his brother disappears, and his girlfriend soon develops an interest in someone else, Jack becomes even more determined to discover the truth. Packed with action and off-the-wall incidents, this fast-paced novel invites readers on an adventure that builds momentum until the very last page.


Nocturne When Nicole Whitcomb's car runs off a Colorado mountain road during a blinding snowstorm, she is saved from death by a handsome, fascinating, and enigmatic stranger.
Snowbound with him for days in his beautiful home high in the Rockies, she finds herself powerfully attracted to him. But there are things about him that mystify her, filling her with apprehension.


Depression Cookies Abby needs some magic in her life, along with a white knight, respectful children, and an exciting career plan. Instead she is drowning in unfulfilled expectations, disappointments, and unmet needs. What she doesn't expect is to find the true essence of magic in the strength, friendship, power, and energy of the female spirit found in her mother and her mother's zany group of friends. Krista cannot believe it's happening again. Her father waltzes in and announces another move. And what does her mother do? Nothing. Don't they realize she's almost thirteen, and this could mean the end of her life? In the midst of teenage melodrama, she is determined to survive a new school, defeat the annoyances of two scene-stealing sisters, and deal with out-of-touch parents. Yet she quickly realizes the double-edged sword of growing up. Depression Cookies Two distinct voices, two stories interwoven within the walls of family and love.


Hana-Lani Only opening their hearts will keep them from plunging into the dark abyss. Old Nani-lei lives in Hana-lani, her family home in rural Hawaii. She looks after her grandson Henry, 52, and his daughter Lucy, 6, who have returned to Maui from Berkeley after the death of Maria, Henry's wife. Henry and Maria, both professors, had been working on A History of Ethics, and now the grieving Henry struggles to finish it. City girl Meredith Campbell, 36, fast-paced, self-centered, and beautiful, believes her body will ensure her happiness. After losing her job and finding her lover unfaithful, she flies to Maui, sure he will follow...but her plane crashes near Hana-lani. As their worlds collide in a natural world both beautiful and dangerous, Henry will be forced to act on his words, and Meredith will come face-to-face with her own life choices. A poignant journey that unravels T.S. Eliot's "permanent questions"- what is goodness, truth, and love? By the author of the thought-provoking trilogy Pilgrimage, Offerings, and Inheritance.


Finding Jack After losing his young family in a tragic accident, Fletcher Carson joins the flagging war effort in Vietnam. Deeply depressed, he plans to die in the war. But during one of his early missions, Fletcher rescues a critically wounded yellow Lab whom he nurses back to health and names Jack. As Fletcher and Jack patrol and survive the forests of Vietnam, Fletcher slowly regains the will to live. At the end of the war, the U.S. Government announces that due to the cost of withdrawal, all U.S. dogs serving in the war have been declared “surplus military equipment” and will not be transported home. For the hundreds of dog handlers throughout Vietnam, whose dogs had saved countless lives, the news is greeted with shock and disbelief. For Fletcher, he knows that if he abandons Jack, then he too will be lost. Ordered to leave Jack behind, he refuses—and so begins their journey. Based on the actual existence and abandonment of canine units in Vietnam, Gareth Crocker’s Finding Jack is a novel of friendship and love under desperate circumstances that will grab your heart and won’t let go.


Between A Rock and a Hot Place: Why Fifty is Not the New Thirty A funny, fearless, no-holds-barred look at aging—hormone replacement therapy, online dating, eye lifts, and all. As she approached her fiftieth birthday, Tracey Jackson found herself bombarded—at the gym, at parties, in conversations with friends—by a catchphrase on everyone's lips. "Fifty is the new thirty" and the endless magazine articles, photos, and T-shirts proclaiming the new aphorism had apparently bloomed out of a collective sense of denial, masking the true fears of a generation unwilling to relinquish their youth.


Spinning Dylan Hunter has it made. At 29, he has great friends, a huge job, all the women he can handle, and no commitments. A public relations executive, Dylan has dashed up the ladder of success by mastering the art of the spin – bending the truth to his and his clients’ needs. But when a former lover steps back into his life with a three-year-old girl by her side (no, she’s not his), Dylan suddenly finds himself in a place he can’t spin himself out of. And when Dylan unexpectedly becomes the child’s sole guardian, he finds himself to be like a circus performer trying to keep all of his spinning plates from crashing to the ground. In what seems like a blink of the eye, Dylan Hunter’s life has changed completely…whether he’s ready for it or not.