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.
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