I can always feel the change, after I choose. Whenever I've made a choice in my life, a real choice. He said people think force and power is the same thing, but really force is what you use when you don't got power. There was this one philosophy class I been in at the university, where the professor was talking about force. Years already I'd been trying to understand what was inside me, while the rest of the world was trying it to tear it out. But what your family would be, could be, is a nest of itchy twigs that poke you to go find and build and be something entirely other to its system: What it leaves most of us with is an aching, unfillable void of loneliness. But the fact is it's what you got, and you got to work with it for the rest of your life. This is an immutable law of existence and a giant gift to storytellers everywhere. The one you were born into probably isn't the one you'd be happiest growing up in.

It is *lush* and deeply, for the shark-o-phobic like me, disturbing its colors unsubtle reminders of the intensity of tropical existence, its acrobatic predator giving me the heebie-jeebies while reminding me that its life-force greatly exceeds mine, its lust for eating casts my puny efforts at survival into the shade and its typographical choice, the handlettered look of the information about what I was holding, capped off my impression that this was vital and urgent storytelling.įamilies suck.

My Review: I stared at the cover of this ARC for long, long minutes when I opened its garishly orange bubble-mailer. THE PUBLISHER SENT ME AN ADVANCE REVIEW COPY. When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawai'i-with tragic consequences-they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family's legacy.

Nainoa's family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods-a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. The Publisher Says: In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. PENAmerica Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Winner!

Sharks in the time of saviors a novel