The Pōhaku by Jasmin Iolani Hakes: An epic, indigenous saga about land, memory, and survival

Jasmin Iolani Hakes’s The Pōhaku is the kind of novel that reminds you why sweeping, multi-generational storytelling can feel so immersive and necessary when it’s done well. Spanning from the 1800s into the 1990s, this ambitious saga follows generations of women from one Hawaiian family, all bound by their responsibility to protect an ancient stone—the pōhaku—and by the land that shaped them.

The novel opens in 1992 as Hurricane Iniki bears down on Hawaiʻi. A young woman lies comatose in a hospital after a mysterious fall from a cliff, watched over by her estranged grandmother. Did she jump, was she swept away by a wave, or was something else at play? The grandmother believes the answer lies not only in the pōhaku itself, but in a devastating omission: her granddaughter was never told about the stone, nor about the family’s sacred responsibility to protect it. As the storm approaches, the grandmother begins telling her the story anyway, hoping that restoring this broken line of knowledge might be enough to bring her back.

Reading The Pōhaku took me back to the epic historical novels I devoured back in the 1900s—those sprawling James A. Michener tomes that traced families, land, and power across centuries. The crucial difference here is perspective. Hakes tells this story fully from an indigenous point of view, grounding the narrative in Hawaiian history, cosmology, and lived experience rather than filtering it through an outsider’s lens. It’s a powerful reminder of how much perspective shapes not just storytelling but meaning. Revisiting those older epics now, through a more educated and feminist lens, would almost certainly feel very different—and The Pōhaku makes that contrast impossible to ignore.

Although I don’t read historical fiction as often as I once did, this novel felt like a welcome departure from my usual thrillers. One of its greatest strengths is the connection between the protagonists and the Earth itself. The pōhaku is tied to the Old Ways and carries a mystical weight, but it never feels ornamental. Instead, it functions as a moral and spiritual anchor, reinforcing the idea that land is not something to be conquered or exploited, but something humans are meant to live in balance with.

Much of the story unfolds in California rather than Hawaiʻi, following members of the family who leave the islands to work there—an aspect of Hawaiian history I hadn’t known much about before reading this novel. While I appreciated learning more about that migration, I often found myself wondering what was happening back in Hawaiʻi during those chapters. The Hawaiʻi-based sections were especially compelling early on, and I spent much of the California portion anticipating a return to the islands, which felt richer with cultural and historical tension.

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Ultimately, The Pōhaku is about far more than a sacred stone. The pōhaku becomes a stand-in for inherited knowledge, cultural responsibility, and all that is lost when those things are withheld or forgotten. The grandmother’s grief is not just about her granddaughter’s injuries, but about her own failure to pass down the story in time. As she recounts their family history during Hurricane Iniki, she reflects on a world that has slipped badly out of balance—environmentally, spiritually, and culturally—and on the cost of breaking generational bonds.

The Pōhaku is a demanding but rewarding read: immersive, thoughtful, and deeply rooted in place. It asks readers to slow down, listen carefully, and consider what it truly means to protect something sacred in a world that keeps trying to take.

If you’ve read The Pōhaku or plan to pick it up, I’d love to hear your thoughts—especially on its treatment of land, legacy, and generational responsibility. Share them in the comments.

The Pōhaku by Jasmin Iolani Hakes is scheduled for release on February 3, 2026. An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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• Q&A with Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes (Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb)
• Jasmin Iolani Hakes’s playlist for her novel Hula (Largehearted Boy)
• How a struggling single mother managed to write the great Hawaiian coming-of-age novel (Los Angeles Times)

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