Fans of The Poet X will fall for this powerful, romantic debut novel-in-verse about a Native Hawaiian girl's fight to find belonging in a fracturing family, sharing a message of love with resounding emotional truth.
Aouli Elizabeth Smith is adrift: unheard at home and an unbeliever at church, fighting her sister and losing her best friend. Overflowing with feeling, she pours her secrets and herself into her song journal when the world threatens to sweep her away. The one place she feels tied down to earth is at her Aunty Ehu's house. Those joyous Saturdays with her extended Native Hawaiian community living in Western Washington are precious to her. Under the maple trees, the fragments of her life fit together, if only for an afternoon.
Then, an unspeakable truth about her father shatters this one perfect corner of her life.
As Aouli's world constricts around what others wish she could be, language fails her. But when a new boy, Nalu, turns up with eyes that seem to pierce right into her soul, maybe it's love that can give her the words to set herself free.
Autorentext
Kauakanilehua Mahoe Adams is the debut author of An Expanse of Blue, a YA novel in verse and a contributor to Legendary Frybread Drive-In, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith, which received the 2025 Michael L. Printz Award and American Indian Youth Literature Award.
Her poetry appears in The Country in the Mirror: Poems of Protest & Witness, edited by Sharon Darrow and in Witness: Poems to Address the Past, Present, and Future of Policing, edited by Ari Tison and Ty Chapman, illustrated by Damon Davis. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Kaua is of Native Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and European descent and grew up as a part of the Native Hawaiian diaspora in Washington state. Today she lives in Carlsbad, California with her husband, where she spends her time writing, reading, dancing hula, and bending to her dogs' every whim. Find her on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads @kauawrites for book news, musings, and a surplus of dog photos