Once There Was Fire: A Novel of Old Hawaii

Product Description

His name was Kamehameha. His people would remember him as “the Conqueror.”
Cut off from the outside world, the Hawaiian people lived in a paradise on earth and fought over it for generations. When strange, pale visitors came from beyond the horizon, the Hawaiians mistook their tall ships for “floating islands” and their leader for one of their gods—returned to them in fulfillment of a prophecy. Metal was almost unknown to them and they marveled at the visitors’ magical iron daggers, axes, muskets, and cannons. One man, Kamehameha, was quick to understand that these newcomers were men. He would use their guns and steel to end centuries of fratricidal warfare and forge a new kingdom at the crossroads of the Pacific Ocean.

Bringing a little-understood, historically remote era to life through the actions and words of its memorable characters, Once There Was Fire invites readers to see Hawaii of the mid-18th and early 19th centuries as the old Hawaiians themselves might have seen and experienced it on the cusp of their passage from splendid isolation to the wider world. Once There Was Fire is the story of old Hawaii James Michener never told.

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