Behold the many

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Where to find it

Davis Library (8th floor)

Call Number
PS3575.A434 B44 2006
Status
Available

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Summary

Behold the Many is the eerily beautiful story of three young sisters, Anah, Aki, and Leah. In 1913, they are sent away from their family for treatment for tuberculosis to an orphanage in Hawaii's Kalihi Valley. Of the three, two will die there, in spite of the nuns' best efforts to save them, and only Anah, the eldest, will grow to adulthood. But the ghosts of the dead children are afraid to leave the grounds of St. Joseph's, which is the only place they have known as home, and as Anah prepares to begin married life away from the orphanage, these ghost children grow angry. Desperate for the love of this girl who has communicated with them since her childhood, jealous of her ability to live in the physical world, and terrified of losing her, the ghosts are determined to thwart Anah's happiness. One of them places a curse on her that will reverberate through her future and that of her new family. As Anah struggles to appease the dead and to quiet her own guilt for living, it becomes apparent that only through one of her own daughters can redemption be attained. Poignant, lyrical, and utterly compelling, Behold the Many is a stunning new novel from the critically acclaimed author Lois-Ann Yamanaka. 

Sample chapter

Excerpted from Behold the Many by Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Copyright (c) 2006 by Jeff Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Published February 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. Kalihi Valley 1939 T he valley is a woman lying on her back, legs spread wide, her geography wet by a constant rain. Waterfalls wash the days and nights of winter storms into the river that empties into the froth of the sea. In the valley, the rain is a gossamer cloth, a tempest of water and leaves. The rain is southerly with strange foreboding. The rain is northerly with cool rime. The rain glistens on maiden fern, the wind rustling the laua'e, the palapalai touching her there where it is always wet and seamy. The valley is a woman with the features of a face, a woman whose eyes watch the procession of the celestial sphere; a woman with woodland arms outstretched and vulnerable, a woman with shadowy breasts of 'a'ali'i and hapu'u, lobelias and lichens; a woman, a womb, impregnated earth. O body. When they find her, she is shiny, she is naked, she is bound, but for her legs, spread open and wet with blood and semen. Tears in her eyes, or is it rain? Breath in her mouth, or is it wind? Her thicket of hair drips into her mouth, sliced open from from ear to ear. She is pale green, the silvery underside of kukui leaves ; her eyes and lips are gray, the ashen hinahina ; her fingers and feet are white, the winter rain in this valley . O body. O beloved Hosana. Anah knows her daughter is dead at the very moment of her passing. She is sitting early dawn in the honey house, surrounded by the hum of the wild swarms outside. Then the dead of a strange silence. Light enters the room in a strand that illuminates the particles of dust, the luminescence of bees' wings. Hosana enters the room in a flowing orange dress. She stops where the sunlight stills. "Hosana?" Her daughter has been gone for weeks. Gone at fourteen with a man who called her beautiful. Gone to the other side of the island of O'ahu. "Remember always, Mother," Hosana says without moving her lips, "love is sweet." Honeybees move in the thick smell of the honey house. She follows her daughter's slow gaze around the room as if placing the honey bins, the amber-filled bottles, the broken smoker, the dust of kiawe pollen, wooden frames, the scent of nectar, and finally her mother's face in her memory. When the light fades, so does she. And then comes the wailing rain from a cloudless sky. Days of rain. Excerpted from Behold the Many by Lois-Ann Yamanaka All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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