Rainbows on the Moon
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- $28.99
Publisher Description
“I was born for adventure. I flout convention. I am a New Woman on a holy purpose.” Newlywed Emily Stone and her husband, Isaac, are young missionaries who have traveled from New England to Honolulu to share the Gospel with the Hawaiian natives.
Gentle, adventurous, well-bred, and beautiful, Emily soon finds herself struggling with intense homesickness but remains determined to share her faith . . . and ignore her growing feelings for handsome Captain MacKenzie Farrow. Just as she begins to bond with the influential High Chiefess Pua and her daughter, Mahina, unexpected tragedy threatens to force her off the island. In a state of confusion, Emily makes a decision that could destroy everything she knows and loves―including her own sanity.
Three decades later, Sister Theresa comes to the islands as a missionary nurse and becomes acquainted with Captain Farrow’s charming son, a powerful man who is instrumental in Hawaii’s alliance with America. Theresa discovers that a dark curse is plaguing his family and the island’s inhabitants, a curse that only Emily and Mahina can help her reverse. With richly imagined characters and spellbinding scenery in the tradition of James A. Michener’s Hawaii, Rainbows on the Moon is a masterful depiction of the beauty of human emotion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Engrossing but flawed, Wood's latest (after 2013's The Serpent and the Staff) chronicles almost 40 years of Christian proselytizing and American commerce in Hawaii. The narrative begins in 1820, when Emily Stone arrives with her Calvinist preacher husband Isaac, both of them determined to clothe and convert the local "heathens." Instead, she finds herself resisting forbidden feelings for handsome sea captain MacKenzie Farrow. Deftly playing with reader expectations, Wood places a number of seemingly insurmountable obstacles in Emily's way before she and MacKenzie are finally free to marry. Moving ahead to 1860 San Francisco, the story shifts focus to a young woman named Anna Barnett. Unable to achieve her dream of being a doctor due to her gender, Anna joins a Catholic order of nuns solely so she can work as a nurse, and, renamed "Sister Theresa," is sent to Hawaii. There, a new forbidden love arises, between Sister Theresa and Honolulu shipping magnate Robert Farrow, MacKenzie and Emily's son. After finely executed beginning and middle sections, the book stumbles to its predictable ending, but it should still remain compelling for historical fiction fans.
