The Color of Air

by Gail Tsukiyama

Genres: Asian American; Siblings; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of Women of the Silk and The Samurai's Garden comes a gorgeous and evocative historical novel about a Japanese-American family set against the backdrop of Hawai’i's sugar plantations.

Daniel Abe, a young doctor in Chicago, is finally coming back to Hawai'i. He has his own reason for returning to his childhood home, but it is not to revisit the past, unlike his Uncle Koji. Koji lives with the memories of Daniel’s mother, Mariko, the love of his life, and the scars of a life hard-lived. He can’t wait to see Daniel, who he’s always thought of as a son, but he knows the time has come to tell him the truth about his mother, and his father. But Daniel’s arrival coincides with the awakening of the Mauna Loa volcano, and its dangerous path toward their village stirs both new and long ago passions in their community.

Alternating between past and present—from the day of the volcano eruption in 1935 to decades prior—The Color of Air interweaves the stories of Daniel, Koji, and Mariko to create a rich, vibrant, bittersweet chorus that celebrates their lifelong bond to one other and to their immigrant community. As Mauna Loa threatens their lives and livelihoods, it also unearths long held secrets simmering below the surface that meld past and present, revealing a path forward for them all.

Release date: May 4, 2021

Publisher: HarperVia

Print pages: 320

Sample

Nori hurried back from the green bungalow to the Okawa Fish Market, across the road from Hilo Bay. One of the two- story clapboard buildings on Kamehameha Avenue, it had formerly been the Hilo Town Bar. She passed the older, two- story S. Hata Building, and the S. H. Kress & Company Building, where all the wealthy haole ladies, whose husbands managed the plantations and ran the banks, came down from their big houses up the hill to have lunch and shop for the latest fashions. The buildings gleamed in their Art Deco newness, both products of the sugar wealth in Hilo town during the past forty years that had kept the town growing, and dimmed all the small family- owned businesses of her childhood. Nori swallowed her rising anxiousness and pushed through the crowded streets. She didn't want to be late to Daniel's party.

Since the stock market crash six years ago, there had been other changes. The once- quiet downtown streets were noisy and restless, teeming with agitated Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Portuguese men waiting desperately for work on the docks. Nori heard that thousands of Filipino workers had already been sent back to the Philippines by the plantation owners, but it was hard to tell as she slipped by so many sour, unwashed bodies, avoiding eye contact as she picked up her pace and clutched her basket close.

"Lady! Lady," someone called out to her, but she kept moving.

In the past few months there'd been countless drunken fights, a stabbing down on the docks outside of Hoku's Bar, and the window of Ching's Laundry had been smashed by a brick in the middle of the night. Nori remembered a time when it never crossed her mind to lock the market's door after dark. Closed meant closed. Now things were different.

Still, as Hilo town continued to grow around her, the one thing that hadn't changed for three generations was the Okawa Fish Market. Every morning, varieties of succulent tuna and snapper, moonfish and swordfish had been caught and brought in, still thrashing, by the Okawa fishermen, first by her father- in- law, and her husband, Samuel, and then, as soon as they graduated from high school, her sons Wilson and Mano. Even now, when Nori stepped into the cool, dark market, the heavy sea salt fish pineapple mildew odor sent her right back to the first day its doors opened twenty- five years ago.



Nori had married Samuel Okawa right after they graduated from high school in 1904. They were both seventeen, and she became pregnant with Wilson almost immediately after they moved into his family's house close to the wharf, staying in Samuel's boyhood room. He began working full- time with his father as a fisherman, while she helped his mother at the family fish stand. Nori worried about Samuel going out to sea, taking the boat out in rough waters, confronting unexpected storms or unforeseen injuries. She nourished her courage with old deities and all the fishing lore passed down through generations, but her heart raced with every month's full moon, which carried another meaning: the currents would be rough in the morning. Unrelenting, unpredictable, unforgiving, the sea was governed by Kanaloa, the god of the ocean. Samuel lived by reading the weather signs, watching the currents and the cloud formations, a language Nori learned to decipher during her first year of marriage. It was a skill that was as suffocating and illuminating as it was frightening and life- saving.

Six years later she opened the fish market. Nori had just turned twenty- three in 1910 when she urged her husband's family to expand the simple lean- to that sold the freshest fish in Hilo down by the wharf into a larger market. Samuel and her in- laws resisted. "We're fishermen, why make more trouble, eh?" her husband had argued. Nori simply smiled and remained insistent. She'd given him two sons in the past five years, and was ready for something more than just changing diapers and waiting for her husband to return home each day bringing the rank smells of fish and sweat. No matter how much her husband protested, she knew he would eventually relent. Samuel was a good, hardworking man, whom she'd known and trusted since he was a boy sitting next to her at Queen Lili'uokalani High School, but Nori had all the business acumen in the family. Hadn't she been the one to put away enough money to buy the building and start the market in the first place?

The new Okawa Fish Market opened two months later. Nori, Samuel, and the boys moved into the upstairs apartment, away from her in- laws for the first time. Nori loved Samuel, and marrying him young was a way to escape the memory of her own uncaring parents. But another weight had been lifted when she had a place of her own, away from the watchful eyes of her mother- in- law, a good woman who expected things done her way. "Do like this, yeah," or "No, no, not that way." For the first time in her life, Nori felt like a bird released from its cage. She bought two large iceboxes and used the long, whiskey- stained koa wood bar as a counter where customers could sit and eat. She had shelves built that lined the walls and stocked essential grocery items— canned foods, sacks of rice, beans, sugar, salt, and flour. "Survivor foods," she called them, along with boxes of matches, cigarettes, sweet and salty dried plums, and candies at the front checkout counter, just in case a customer had forgotten to pick up something at Oshima's grocery store, or worse yet, a natural disaster had rumbled through the island, leaving them completely cut off from the rest of the world.

Soon, besides selling the famous Okawa fresh fish, Nori cooked and baked in the small kitchen in back— relatives coming in and out to help— and also sold hot coffee, soda pop, sushi, sweetbread, coconut tarts, red bean buns, and whatever else could be quickly downed while working on a boat or sitting at the counter. She began serving breakfast and lunch when she saw how the locals liked to linger at the market every day, as did a pack of homeless, mostly congenial dogs waiting for daily scraps. Tables and chairs were set up not only in the market, but also out back in the yard for those who wanted to sit and linger longer. All considered the market an extension of their own homes. It was ohana, family run and founded by one of their own, and it quickly became the main gathering place in Hilo for island news and gossip.

And business promised to become even brighter in the months ahead. The railway station just down the street was expanding service to sugar mills north of Hilo along the Hamakua coast, which would soon bring in more customers as the sugar and shipping industries continued to grow. Nori was overwhelmed. She'd never expected the market to succeed so quickly, consuming all her time and energy. Every evening she put her boys to bed and headed straight for her own. Before dawn every morning Nori was downstairs at the market mixing, rolling, and baking loaves of sweetbread, breaking eggs, and frying Portuguese sausage and bacon for the dockworkers and hungry fishermen who flocked there for breakfast before they returned home to sleep. While Nori was grateful for the Okawa Fish Market's popularity, she was unprepared for all the work it involved. By her second month in business, she hired her cousin, Jelly, to work the counter full- time, and Jelly's fourteen- year- old son, Nobu, to do the stocking and heavy work, while other relatives took turns watching the boys upstairs as the market continued to grow.



By the time Nori reached the market all the locals had already gathered for Daniel's welcome home party. She sent her sons, Wilson and Mano, down to the docks to wait for Daniel to arrive, while her childhood friend Leia Natua, along with her sister Noelani, Jelly, and Samuel had laid out platters of food on the koa bar. Beer and soda pop were flowing freely. Nori was especially happy to see the jar of mango jam she'd made from Mariko's mangoes on the bar. She and Leia had gone over to the house and picked most of the mangoes in early August, the last of them used in the jam now waiting for Daniel. But the biggest surprise was that the famous Okawa Fish Market bulletin board, which hung across the entire back wall and which was usually covered with ads and announcements, was now also decorated with a banner of big block letters across it that spelled out WELCOOME HOME,DANIEL!

The hum of voices grew and laughter filled the air. Nori looked around the room at faces she'd known for most of her life, all the while missing Mariko, the one person who should have been there for her son's homecoming. When the floorboards quivered beneath her feet, Nori imagined it was Mariko trying to return again. She paused, waiting for the tremors to end, but instead of slowing, they grew in intensity. All the voices hushed as a rumbling, quaking movement took possession of the building. In the next moment, the entire building seemed to be rocking, ceiling fans swaying from side to side, cans and bottles toppling from the shelves in small explosions of shattering glass. "Everyone outside!"

Samuel yelled. Suddenly Nori realized that she hadn't seen Koji in the crowd. He was always the one they turned to in emergencies. In her panic, Nori couldn't think of what to grab, and reached for the jar of mango jam, just as Samuel grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the front door.