Sharks in the Time of Saviors

 by Kawai Strong Washburn

This is the story of a very poor Hawaiian Family with children. One of the children is conceived in the back of a vehicle on a beach, while spirits are walking up in the hills.

When the boy is about five the family go on a tour boat outing.  Somehow the little boy Noa falls into the water and is soon surrounded by sharks.  Everyone fears the worst but instead of killing him the sharks surround him and bring him to the boat.  After that it seems that the boy has special healing powers and people flock to his home to get healed.  This healing takes a physical and mental toll on the boy but his parents make some extra income from it so he gets special treatment from them.  Then one day a man with Parkinson returns to the house complaining he was not cured.  The boy stops treating people.

The boys sister and brother are jealous that he is their parent's favourite.  The boy is an ace at school and seems to be destined for Stanford.  His brother is very good at basketball and resents that he doesn't get any attention.  He feels if he gets a successful career in basketball he will bring more money to his parents than his brother has ever done.  The sister too feels neglected.

The story jumps forward in time, the young boy is now a paramedic in Seattle.  What happened, why didn't he become a doctor if he was so smart?  This is never explained.  He does practice his healing ways as a paramedic. His partner wants to know what he is doing....  Then one day a pregnant woman is injured in a car crash and Noa is not able to save her.  He is devastated by this and ends up leaving his job and returning to Hawaii to find himself.

At the same time, his brother got a basketball scholarship and became famous, his parents were finally paying attention to him now that the media and locals were praising him.  The brother's grades decline and he is eventually kicked out of school and starts a delivery job.

The daughter is in San Diego studying engineering and getting good grades but she is also doing drugs and doing dangerous climbing activities every chance she gets.  She is part of a group of 4 people that are very close but her relationship with the other girl in the group deteriorates when the daughter makes lesbian overtures to the girl.

When Noa is back in Hawaii he leaves to go into the wilderness to find himself.  When he doesn't return people start searching for him but cannot locate him.  His brother eventually returns to Hawaii to search for his brother.  He is the one who finds evidence that Noa was killed in a landslide.  The death of Noa puts the father into a catatonic state.  The mother struggles to look after her husband and make enough money to survive.

The brother returns to the states with the sister to clear out Noa's rental accommodation.  They have a confrontation with police and a removal company.  The sister ends up stealing a car to get away from the police but the brother ejects her from the car and tells the police he did it to protect his sister.  He goes to jail where he develops a prosperous business supplying things to other prisoners, with the cooperation of one of the guards.  He starts sending money to his family from his profits.   Even after he is out of jail he keeps working at an illegal business.   The parents don't like to think about where the money has come from but are glad to have it.

The daughter eventually returns to Hawaii, abandoning her university studies.  She starts working for free for a man that is developing an ecologically progressive farm.  She is using some of her engineering knowledge to help him develop his farm hoping eventually to get some money out of her work.

The family go to visit her at the farm, the father seems to come out of his stupor at least temporarily.

The book implies that Noa might be challenging the old gods of Hawaii and might have the power to help heal the islands, but instead of doing this he is killed.  At the end of the book it looks like the sister and father might also somehow have a connection to the islands and maybe they will do alright.

The novel was very powerfully written, the struggles of the characters, the tension between the parents and the siblings was honest and powerful.  The impact of expectations, or lack thereof, of people was brilliantly portrayed.  I just feel a couple things were not explained.... why didn't Noa become a doctor and why did he have to die?

Overall, I was really impressed with the book and engaged with the story.

 New York Times Review:

In this novel, the only way out is back. After Noa’s overconfidence in his gifts leads to a disaster at his job, he returns to Hawaii and goes on a quest to understand both himself and the ancestral land that is a part of him. His expedition will come at a hefty price for him and his loved ones — incarceration, mental illness, unemployment — but isn’t that the point of a journey to our roots? So we may walk through fire, and so be purified?

Perhaps a day will come when humans will no longer need to make exorbitant sacrifices in order to see the light of their true selves. Until then, Washburn has given us a meditation on the tragedies of living too long in the darkness.