Rape - Racism - Murder Bootleggers murder Grant Kingsley's fishing companion and later threaten to kill him and his family. Grant vows to find the killers. Is it for revenge or to bring them to justice? Meanwhile, the 1931 Hollywood image of Hawaii as a paradise is shredded when a U.S. Navy wife, Thalia Massie, accuses five local men of gang rape. National news portrays them as depraved, dark, sexual predators. The Navy demands imposition of martial law. The elite, white supremacist oligarchy demands swift justice and the death penalty. Minorities, the locals, fear the future. At school, twelve-year-old Daniel Kingsley is bullied by Japanese and Hawaiian classmates, sons of sugar workers, because they believe his father is a white plantation owner. They resent the poor wages and unhealthy living conditions. Dan works to gain their friendship on the playing field, tries to help them handle the fear of racial violence set loose by the rape case, and urges them to feel loyalty to America despite the power of the whites over the minorities. The jury fails to convict the men. Enraged, the mother, husband, and two navy men seek to force a confession. This leads to a second infamous trial after the police find a body in their car. A volcano of racial hatred erupts when the Caucasians are tried for murder. Clarence Darrow defends them, using the "honor killing" defense. When Grant Kingsley's wife and children are attacked by the bootleggers, his reaction to seek revenge fights against his belief in law. Daniel hears Lt. Massie testify about his wife's rape and thinks of his mother and sister. The police move slowly on the bootlegger case so Grant and a detective try to capture them on their own. Then the news of the murder case verdict and punishment reveals a dark truth: Hawaii is a two-tiered society where whites can get away with murder of the minorities.
About the Author: Bill Fernandez was born and raised on a tiny Pacific Island, Kauai, in Hawaii. At age fourteen, he was sent to a boarding school in Honolulu, Kamehameha. He attended Stanford University and its law school then settled in Sunnyvale, CA, where he practiced law before accepting a judgeship in Santa Clara County, the future home of Silicon Valley. Bill presided over both criminal and civil cases before retiring after twenty years. Bill and his wife Judith returned to his home on Kauai where his family had built a large movie theater, Roxy, in 1939. Bill has written memoirs (Rainbows Over Kapaa, Kauai Kids in Peace and W W Two, Hawaii in War and Peace) and novels (Cult of Ku - A Grant Kingsley Novel, John Tana, An Adventure Novel of Old Hawaii). His novels are set in various historical periods of the islands and from the point of view of the commoner native Hawaiian. Bill is half Hawaiian. Bill serves on the boards of Hale Opio a service organization, Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce, and State of Hawaii Juvenile Justice State Advisory Commission. He is a Past President of the Kauai Historical Society. For hobbies, Bill enjoys military history, opera, and golf. He and his wife live in the home his mother bought with her pineapple earnings in the 1920s where they sit on the porch and count the waves when not writing. Bill enjoys giving book talks with a powerpoint slide show prepared by Judith.