In ten stories, Mariah Rigg immerses readers in contemporary Hawaii. These stories of love, longing, and grief are dispatches from a state haunted by the specter of colonization—a biome under constant threat.
Absorbing, gentle, and melancholy ... All ten stories contribute to the whole—a collective narrative that feels like a deep breath of gratitude, longing, and heartbreak for a future in the face of climate change ... Rigg writes eloquently and carefully, her prose containing a beat and rhythm that sound just as heartfelt as it does strong, demanding attention. Her many characters contain the real and raw of personhood, and she finds ways to place elevated, sometimes gut-wrenching, lines of poetry within paragraphs where they are not expected but still felt. These stories glide together smoothly, the characters living lives that intermingle and merge in subtle and intentional ways.
Masterful ... Each of Rigg's stories easily stands alone as a succinct narrative but to parse together the web of tangled relationships yields gratifying rewards ... Throughout her meticulous fiction, she skillfully intertwines Hawai'i's complicated history of military abuse, missionary usurpation, colonial legacy, invasive tourism, ecological destruction. That intricate collage of people and events creates a wondrous literary gift.
