"Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's wrenching and sensational debut story collection follows a cast of mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women through a contemporary landscape thick with inherited wisdom and the ghosts of colonization. This is a Hawai'i where unruly sexuality and generational memory overflow the postcard image of paradise and the boundaries of the real, where the superstitions born of the islands take on the weight of truth. A childhood encounter with a wild pua'a (pig) on the haunted Pali highway portends one young woman's fraught relationship with her pregnant body. An elderly widow begins seeing her deceased lover in a giant flower. A kanaka writer, mid-manuscript, feels her raw pages quaking and knocking in the briefcase"-- Provided by publisher.

A catalogue of Kãnaka superstitions, as told by your mother --Every drop is a man's nightmare -- Story of men -- Temporary dwellers -- Madwomen -- Ms. Amelia's Salon for Women in Charge -- Hotel Molokai -- Aiko, the writer -- Some things I know about Elvis -- Teach me like one of your island girls: a love story -- The love and decline of the corpse flower.