She remembers the pain of losing him, but she smiles at the happiness he brought her, cherishing the joy she felt at his side.

Diedrichson looked at her a moment as if processing a foreign and generally unwanted thought – then, to her surprise, his frown up-ended itself into a smile.

I did not know this word, “lynching,” but when I asked Jade Moon about it she explained, “As I understand, it refers to a custom in the American South, where white men may punish the darker peoples with impunity by hanging them from trees.” I was speechless. How could such barbarity exist in a land of freedom like America? What country was this, in which I had been living all these years?

Before Cook’s arrival the native population of Hawai’i was more than a quarter of a million people; a hundred years later, it had plummeted to fewer than sixty thousand.

At least I know today that I will not have to wait that long.

The weeping of grown men and women, cries of hopelessness and loss, separation and misery. And in that collective lament, Ruth heard one closer by, muted in its shame: the sound of her own father’s sobs, shocking in its newness, his familiar strength and solidity, like a once-sturdy oak, now riven with such grief and despair that it broke his daughter’s heart.

There might be more to the universe than any one religion could explain.

I’m a practical man, Haleola. It’s true, I want to save souls. But it’s a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life. If I can provide some comfort, some ease of life for those about to lose theirs, how could I hesitate to try?

We moved into Jade Moon’s rooming house within the week, and slowly she and I found that our friendship, though damaged, was like fabric torn on the seam: not beyond repair.

Fear is our boon companion but never our master.