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Writers Present: Alan Brennert on Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 7PM

Alan Brennert's 2003 novel Molokai was a book club phenomenon that became a national bestseller. In Daughter of Molokai, Brennert returns to the world that captivated hundreds of thousands of readers to tell the story of Ruth, a remarkable woman who grapples with identity, belonging, family, and history. Its a richly emotional story about personal discovery and the bonds of family.

In 1917 Ruth Utagawa, no more than a year old, is brought to the Kapiolani Home for Girls in Honolulu. Ruth is half Hawaiian and half Japanese. Taken from her parents who both have Hansens disease (leprosy) and are quarantined on the island of Molokai, Ruth lives with the nuns at Kapiolani until she is adopted by Taizo and Etsuko Watanabe, a Japanese family with three sons. The Watanabes move with Ruth to California to help on Taizos brothers farm. They flourish in California, living in a close-knit Japanese community. By 1941, Ruth is married with two kids of her own. Though the Watanabes had always faced the blatant racism from white communities who saw them as taking farm land away from Americans, the attack on Pearl Harbor changes everything about life as they know it. The Watanabes are interned at the Manzanar Relocation Camp, testing the limits of their strength and resolve. After the war they work to rebuild their lives, having lost everything but each other. When Ruth receives a letter from her birth mother, Rachel (the protagonist in Molokai), her life is thrown into confusion once again, as she is forced to reckon with her past.

Alan Brennert is the author of Honolulu and Molokai, which was a 2006-2007 BookSense Reading Group Pick and won the 2006 Bookies Award for the Book Club Book of the Year. He won an Emmy Award and a Peoples Choice Award for his work as a writer-producer on the television series L.A. Law.

General Admission Writers Present Ticket for 1 admission
Writers Present book talk beginning at 7 p.m. followed by Q & A book signing.
General Admission Ticket - $32 includes:
1 admission with guaranteed first come, first served seating
1 hardcover 1st edition of Daughter of Molokai
Preferred book signing in order of online purchase