July 10, 2006

Life in a Canoe

Hawai‘i Governor’s Award winner and Manoa Professor Ian MacMillan published the novel The Seven Orchids.

The koa canoe is one of the most important symbols in Hawaiian culture today, a link between Hawai‘i’s simpler past and its sophisticated present. MacMillan takes us over to Moloka‘i where a crew of misfit paddlers—women who are dealing with alcoholism, divorce, depression, and more—find an old koa canoe stored in a rundown shed. In a powerful and gripping story centered around the canoe, MacMillan puts us in the boat with the crew.

First, we train, and then we paddle in the world championship of outrigger canoe racing, the Moloka‘i to O‘ahu race. A symbol of life, the koa canoe changes each woman, helping her to refocus her life. As they cross Ka Iwi Channel, they leave their misfit status behind in the wake of the canoe.

In the midst of his story, MacMillan thoroughly documents the sport of outrigger canoe paddling as only an insider could. He’s been there and done that and we ride with him through one of the best accounts of paddling the channel in Hawaiian literature. The Seven Orchids entertains and educates us at the same time.

The Seven Orchids is available from the Bamboo Ridge website.

—Text excerpted from the publisher’s website.

UH In Print

UH faculty and staff who had articles or other works published.

• Manoa Professor David Christopher co-authored “Ambient Levels of UV-B in Hawai‘i Combined with Nutrient Deficiency Decrease Photosynthesis in Near-Isogenic Maize Lines Varying in Leaf Flavonoids: Flavonoids Decrease Photoinhibition in Plants Exposed to UV-B” in Photosynthetica.
• Manoa Graduate Assistant Nicholas Moskovitz co-authored “Terrestrial Exoplanet Light Curves” in the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union.

E-mail news about UH faculty and staff who have appeared In Print to newsatuh@hawaii.edu.

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