And he is blessed with a very unique power. Malia understands then and there that Noa is special. His mother, Malia, dives in to rescue him but, miracle of miracles, one of the sharks has delivered him to safety, cradled in its jaws like he was one of its pups. He’s seven years old, and suddenly surrounded by sharks. Nainoa, the middle child, affectionally known as Noa, falls into the water. The Flores family opts to celebrate a small victory with a tour out on a glass-bottom boat. At its most ambitious, Sharks is about a place, a culture, and a people, paved over by haole ways and means. Intensely personal at its core, Kawai Strong Washburn’s debut novel, Sharks in the Time of Saviors, is, fundamentally, about the Flores family, a Filipino-Hawaiian family trapped under the collapse of their sugarcane plantation. Like something telepathic is taking place. It’s a strange communion, this connection. We see what the writer wants us to see and feel what the writer wants us to feel. We forget ourselves and tumble into the world of the book. EVERY READER OF THIS website understands what I’m about to write: the discovery of a great novel is a transcendent experience.
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