The Red Sky Over Hawaii by Sara Ackerman - BLOG Tour
Red Sky Over Hawaii: A Novel by Sara Ackerman is being published
next week on June 9th. I am so happy to be part of the BLOG tour for
this amazing book. Lana is racing to visit her dying father in the days leading
up to Pearl Harbor. After his death, she is at her father’s house when US officials
take away some of his friends for questioning, leaving their children with Lana.
Pearl Harbor has changed Hawaii, and anyone suspected of colluding with Japan
is rounded up for questioning. Lana takes the children to a house her father
had been building to keep them safe until their parents could return. While at
her father’s new house, she meets a Major in the US military and she must lie
to him to protect the children. This works until the Major becomes closer to
the family and to Lana.
I loved books about this time in history and was very interested
in this book. I had not heard a lot about what happened in Hawaii after Pearl
Harbor so the history interested me just as much as the story itself. Please
enjoy this excerpt from the book until it is released next week!
THE ROAD
December 8, 1941
WITH EVERY MILE CLOSER TO
VOLCANO, THE FOG thickened, until they were driving through a forest of white
gauze with the occasional branch showing through. Lana considered turning the
truck around no less than forty-six times. Going back to Hilo would have been
the prudent thing to do, but this was not a time for prudence. Of that she was
sure. She slowed the Chevy to a crawl and checked the rearview mirror. The cage
with the geese was now invisible, and she could barely make out the dog’s big
black spots.
Maybe the fog would be to their advantage.
“I
don’t like it here at all,” said Coco, who was smashed up next to Lana, scrawny
arms folded in protest. The child had to almost yell to be heard above the chug
of the motor.
Lana grabbed a blanket from the floor. “Put this over
you. It should help.”
Coco shook her head. “I’m not cold. I want to go
home. Can you please take us back?”
Goose bumps had formed up and down her limbs, but she
was so stubborn that she had refused to put on a jacket. True, Hilo was insufferably
hot, but where they were headed—four thousand feet up the mountain—the air was
cold and damp and flimsy.
It had been over ten years since Lana had set foot at
Kı¯lauea. Never would she have guessed to be returning under these
circumstances.
Marie chimed in. “We can’t go back now, sis. And
anyway, there’s no one to go back to at the moment.”
Poor Coco trembled. Lana wished she could hug the
girl and tell her everything was going to be okay. But that would be a lie.
Things were liable to get a whole lot worse before they got any better.
“Sorry, honey. I wish things were different, but
right now you two are my priority. Once we get to the house, we can make a
plan,” Lana said.
“But you don’t even know where it is,” Coco whined.
“I have a good idea.”
More like a vague notion.
“What
if we don’t find it by dark? Are they going to shoot us?” Coco said.
Marie put her arm around
Coco and pulled her in. “Turn off that little overactive imagination of yours.
No one is going to shoot us,” she said, but threw a questioning glance Lana’s
way.
“We’ll
be fine,” Lana said, wishing she believed that.
The
girls were not the real problem here. Of greater concern was what they had
hidden in the back of the truck. Curfew was six o’clock, but people had been
ordered to stay off the roads unless their travel was essential to the war.
Lana hadn’t told the girls that. Driving up here was a huge risk, but she had
invented a story she hoped and prayed would let them get through if anyone
stopped them. The thought of a checkpoint caused her palms to break out in
sweat, despite the icy air blowing in through the cracks in the floorboard.
On a
good day, the road from Hilo to Volcano would take about an hour and a half.
Today was not a good day. Every so often they hit a rut the size of a whiskey
barrel that bounced her head straight into the roof. The continuous drizzle of
the rain forest had undermined all attempts at smooth roads here. At times the
ride was reminiscent of the plane ride from Honolulu. Exactly two days ago, but
felt more like a lifetime.
Lana’s
main worry was what they would encounter once in the vicinity of the national
park entrance. With the Kı¯lauea military camp nearby, there were bound to be
soldiers and roadblocks in the area. She had so many questions for her father
and felt a mixed ache of sadness and resentment that he was not here to answer
them. How were you so sure the Japanese were coming? Why the volcano, of all
places? How are we going to survive up here? Why didn’t you call me sooner?
Coco
seemed to settle down, leaning her nut-brown ringlets against her sister’s
shoulder and closing her eyes. There was something comforting in the roar of
the engine and the jostle of the truck. With the whiteout it was hard to tell
where they were, but by all estimates they should be arriving soon.
Lana
was dreaming of a cup of hot coffee when Coco sat upright and said, “I have to
go tinkle.”
“Tinkle?”
Lana asked.
Marie
said, “She means she has to go to the bathroom.”
They
drove until they found a grassy shoulder, and Lana pulled the truck aside,
though they could have stopped in the middle of the road. They had met only one
other vehicle the whole way, a police car that fortunately had passed by.
The
rain had let up, and they all climbed out. It was like walking through a cloud,
and the air smelled metallic and faintly lemony from the eucalyptus that lined
the road. Lana went to check on Sailor. The dog stood up and whined, yanking on
the rope around her neck, straining to be pet. Poor thing was drenched and
shaking. Lana had wanted to leave her behind with a neighbor, but Coco had put
up such a fuss, throwing herself onto her bed and wailing and punching the
pillow, that Lana relented. Caring for the girls would be hard enough, but a
hundred-and-twenty-pound dog?
“Just
a bathroom stop. Is everyone okay back here?” she asked in a hushed voice. Two
low grunts came from under the tarp. “We should be there soon. Remember, be
still and don’t make a sound if we stop again.”
As if
on cue, one of the hidden passengers started a coughing fit, shaking the whole
tarp. She wondered how wise it was to subject him to this long and chilly ride,
and if it might be the death of him. But the alternative was worse.
“Deep
breaths…you can do it,” Lana said.
Coco
showed up and hopped onto the back tire. “I think we should put Sailor inside
with us. She looks miserable.”
“Whose
lap do you propose she sits on?” Lana said.
Sailor
was as tall as a small horse, but half as wide.
“I
can sit in the back of the truck and she can come up here, then,” Coco said in
all seriousness.
“Not
in those clothes you won’t. We don’t need you catching pneumonia on us.”
They
started off again, and ten seconds down the road, Sailor started howling at the
top of her lungs. Lana felt herself on the verge of unraveling. The last thing
they needed was one extra ounce of attention. The whole idea of coming up here
was preposterous when she thought about it. At the time it had seemed like a
good idea, but now she wondered at her sanity.
“What
is wrong with that dog?” Lana said, annoyed.
Coco
turned around, and Lana felt her hot breath against her arm. In the smallest of
voices, she said, “Sailor is scared.”
Lana
felt her heart crack. “Oh, honey, we’re all a bit scared.
It’s
perfectly normal under the circumstances. But I promise you this—I will do
everything in my power to keep you out of harm’s way.”
“But
you hardly know us,” Coco said.
“My
father knew you, and you knew him, right?” Lana said. “And remember, if anyone
asks, we tell them our story.”
They
had rehearsed it many times already, but with kids one could never be sure. Not
that Lana had much experience with kids. With none of her own and no nieces or
nephews in the islands, she felt the lack palpably, smack in the center of her
chest. There had been a time when she saw children in her future, but that
dream had come and gone and left her sitting on the curb with a jarful of
tears.
Her
mind immediately went to Buck. Strange how your future with a person could veer
so far off course from how you’d originally pictured it. How the one person you
swore you would have and hold could end up wreaking havoc on your heart
instead. She blinked the thought away.
As
they neared Volcano, the fog remained like a curtain, but the air around them
brightened. Lana knew from all her time up here as a young girl that the trees
got smaller as the elevation rose, and the terrain changed from towering
eucalyptus and fields of yellow-and-white ginger to a more cindery terrain
covered with red-blossomed ‘ohi‘a trees, and prehistoriclooking ha¯pu’u ferns
and the crawling uluhe. At one time in her life, this had been one of her
happiest places. Coco reached for the letter on the dashboard and began reading
it for the fourth time. “Coco Hitchcock. It sounds funny.” The paper was
already getting worn.
Marie
swiped it out of her hands. “You’re going to ruin that. Give it to me.”
Where
Coco was whip thin and dark and spirited—a nice way of putting it—Marie was
blonde and full-bodied and sweet as coconut taffy. But Lana could tell even
Marie’s patience was wearing thin.
“Mrs.
Hitchcock said we need to memorize our new names or we’ll be shot.”
Lana
said as calmly as she could, “I never said anything of the sort. And, Coco, you
have to get used to calling me Aunt Lana for now. Both of you do.”
“And
stop talking about getting shot,” Marie added, rolling her eyes.
If
they could all just hold it together a little bit longer.
There
was sweat pooling between her breasts and behind her kneecaps. Lying was not
her strong suit, and she was hoping that, by some strange miracle, they could
sail on through without anyone stopping them. She rolled her window down a
couple of inches for a burst of fresh air. “We’re just about here. So if we get
stopped, let me do the talking. Speak only if someone asks you a direct
question, okay?”
Neither
girl said anything; they both just nodded. Lana could almost see the fear
condensing on the windshield. And pretty soon little Coco started sniffling.
Lana would have said something to comfort her, but her mind was void of words.
Next the sniffles turned into heaving sobs big enough to break the poor girl in
half. Marie rubbed her hand up and down Coco’s back in a warm, smooth circle.
“You
can cry when we get there, but no tears now,” she said.
Tears
and snot were smeared across Coco’s face in one big shiny layer. “But they
might kill Mama and Papa.” Her face was pinched and twisted into such anguish
that Lana had to fight back a sob of her own.
Excerpted from Red Sky Over
Hawaii by Sara Ackerman, Copyright © 2020 by Sara Sckerman.
Published by MIRA Books.
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