Kapu

by Joe Bice

Imagine paradise, the Garden of Eden, Shangri-La. Smell the fragrance of tropical plumeria and butterfly ginger. Visualize halos of mysterious clouds hugging tree-enriched mountains; radiant rainbows arching rivers and vast red canyons. Utopia is the garden island of Kauai, the northern most inhabited Hawaiian island, in the year of our Lord, 1772. Simple people fearful of the gods live a mostly peaceful existence of raising families and hunting for food while adhering to many kapu's (forbidden sanctified laws) punishable by death if defied. Human sacrifices to the supreme god Kane are commonplace. Prince Ka’le, thirteen year-old son of Ali’i Nui Kaikala, chief of the village of Kamokila, saunters along a lava-rock reef near the shore of Anahola Bay. An odd piece of wood with tapa attached pokes from a blowhole, which leads him to remains on the ocean floor of a shipwrecked Spanish Galleon. Ka’le ultimately discovers a fortune in gold ingots, enough temptation to create havoc on this quiet island paradise. He tells only his guardian and friend, Noela, of his find. Certainly not his royal brother, Kimo. Ka’le and Kimo, the unidentical thirteen-year-old twin sons of Ali'i Nui Kaikala and Chiefess Ema, are as disparate as the distance between mountaintop and seashore. Ka’le is amiable and generous; committed to the village and his subjects as heir apparent. Kimo is devious, caustic, aspiring by any means to become chief of Kamokila, despite his brother's preordained role of leadership having been first born.

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 14, 2012