A House in Hana

Book excerpt: A House in Hana...is the story about Lani Winters, a nursery owner and avid orchid collector in the Hudson Valley, who is of Polynesian descent and was adopted as an infant. Her nursery is struggling, but to make things worse, her boyfriend of six years breaks up with her and wants to be bought out. One day, she suddenly receives a letter from a lawyer in Kahului, Maui, informing her that she inherited a house in Hana from her great-aunt Malani.She travels to Maui and not only to find a house that is in dire need of renovation and has to be fixed up within one year, otherwise it will be sold to an investor who wants to bulldoze it and build oceanfront condos, she also finds out that her mother disappeared from the face of the Earth when she became pregnant and her father, Lani's grandfather, wanted to talk her into having an abortion.When Lani arrives at the house, she finds a painting of a woman who looks exactly like her: It seems that her father was a renowned artist and painted many paintings of her mother and the beautiful tropical surroundings of Hana and Maui. But he also obviously died a mysterious death and all information about his death has been deleted from the internet.Lani also finds a village that has been in a feud since thirty years, divided between the people that were on her great-aunt Malani's side who thought the pregnant girl, Lani's mother, should have all the assistance she could get, and the people that were on the grandfather's side who did not support having a child from a Haole, a white man.Max, the caretaker of the house, who lives in the guesthouse, not only helps Lani evaluate how much work the house needs, but he also helps Lani follow traces of her mother and father while he shows her beautiful sites of Hana and surroundings. They fall madly in love, but when the singer of a Jazz combo shows up at the house more than Lani can tolerate and obviously wants more from Max than just hang out, Lani is not sure whether Max is just using her or really loves her. She withdraws from him until she is sure about his love.The house suffers a final blow which is the straw that breaks the camel's back, but the residents of Hana have a big surprise for Lani.