Hawaii

Hawaii opens with the fiery volcanic birth of the islands, then traces the peoples who arrive to make them home. First come the Polynesians, navigating thousands of miles of open Pacific to escape war and famine in their old home. Centuries later, New England missionaries land with Bibles and rigid certainty, bent on saving souls and remaking a way of life. Then come Chinese and Japanese laborers, recruited for the sugar plantations and carrying their own traditions into the mix. Michener follows these bloodlines across generations, showing how migration, faith, ambition, and intermarriage forge a single society out of many. The result is a portrait of a place built entirely by newcomers and the collisions between them.