Product Description

From Kiana Davenport, the bestselling author of Song of the Exile and Shark Dialogues, comes another mesmerizing novel about her people and her islands. Told in spellbinding and mythic prose, House of Many Gods is a deeply complex and provocative love story set against the background of Hawaii and Russia. Interwoven throughout with the indelible portrait of a native Hawaiian family struggling against poverty, drug wars, and the increasing military occupation of their sacred lands.

Progressing from the 1960s to the turbulent present, the novel begins on the island of O’ahu and centers on Ana, abandoned by her mother as a child. Raised by her extended family on the “lawless” Wai’anae coast, west of Honolulu, Ana, against all odds, becomes a physician. While tending victims of Hurricane ‘Iniki on the neighboring island of Kaua’i, she meets Nikolai, a Russian filmmaker with a violent and tragic past, who can confront reality only through his unique prism of lies. Yet he is dedicated to recording the ecological horrors in his motherland and across the Pacific.

As their lives slowly and inextricably intertwine, Ana and Nikolai’s story becomes an odyssey that spans decades and sweeps the reader from rural Hawaii to the forbidding Arctic wastes of Russia; from the poverty-stricken Wai’anae coast to the glittering harshness of “new Moscow” and the haunting, faded beauty of St. Petersburg. With stunning narrative inventiveness, Davenport has created a timeless epic of loss and remembrance, of the search for family and identity, and, ultimately, of the redemptive power of love.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #108084 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-26
• Released on: 2007-06-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A family battles poverty, government indifference and each other in Davenport's rich third novel (Song of Exile). Ana's mother, the beautiful Anahola, fled the Hawaiian coastal town of Nanakuli, on Oahu, when Ana was still small for a new life on her own in San Francisco, leaving Ana to bring herself up in a house filled with wounded veteran uncles in an impoverished town riddled by drugs and teenage thugs. Determined not to become like her beloved but abused cousin, pregnant at 15 and stuck, Ana fights her way through college and medical school. Furious at her estranged mother, she nonetheless yearns for her, calling her California home just to hear her breathe. Leery of love and of the damaged men who populate her world, she finally opens her heart to Nikolai Volenko, a Russian filmmaker with a dangerous past, who's come to the Waianae coast to document the threat of a nearby weapons factory. When Niki is forced to return to Russia, Ana has to decide whether to accept her mother's help in finding the man she loves or retreat to the safety of the island she has never left. This is a lush, ambitious novel that delves deeply into familial conflict and forgiveness and offers a fascinating glimpse into the beauty and contradictions of native Hawaiian culture.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Written as two stories that come together in a beautiful love story, this novel will appeal to teens on many levels. It follows the life of Ana, raised in Hawaii by a family that includes uncles demoralized by the Vietnam War and addicted to drugs and despair, and women burdened by poverty and child rearing. Determined to break the cycle, Ana manages college and medical school with a ferocity fueled by anger at the mother who left her and by the loving support of her extended family. Nikolai was orphaned as a small child and left to roam the streets of St. Petersburg when his mother died while camping out near the jail where her husband was held as a political prisoner. The young people meet dramatically during a hurricane in Hawaii, and Ana becomes impressed by Nikolai's work as a documentary filmmaker passionately dedicated to exposing the manmade ecological havoc in Russia and in Hawaii. Well-drawn characterizations of the two principals as well as Ana's colorful relatives will capture readers, as will the vivid descriptions of the stark, frozen Russian countryside, its once majestic cities, and the contrasting lush islands of Hawaii.-Jackie Gropman, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Ana Kapakahi, the abandoned child of an ambitious mother, is raised in a household of ruined vets and women without husbands. She nourishes her anger and resentment toward her mother into adulthood, while in medical school, and during a bout with breast cancer, rebuffing every effort at reconciliation. Ana and her beloved cousin Lopaka--a returned Vietnam vet--are the first of their generation to attend college, promising to brighten the economic prospects for their large, unruly family even as their native Hawaiian paradise is threatened by nuclear testing. During a hurricane on the island of Kauai, Ana meets Niki, a Russian documentary filmmaker, and her perspective on the world, as seen from her tiny island and her close-knit community, changes drastically. They are two profoundly injured people from polar-opposite backgrounds, but their appreciation for the sanctity of the earth and the importance of culture to individual identity forms a powerful attraction. Davenport, author of the critically acclaimed Song of the Exile (1999), again works magic with evocative descriptions of place--lush Hawaii and frigid Russia--and poignant portraits of humans with all their flaws. Vanessa Bush
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