The Healing Water After All

Healing Water – A Hawaiian Story, written by Joyce Moyer Hostetter, talks about Pia, a young hapa-haole, who went to Molokai with his leprosy. Pia also brought his disappointment and anger from Kamaka, his closest betrayal friend, and God for not hearing his prayers to the settlement. However, the story comes with the reduction of Pia’s anger and ends with his forgiveness to Kamaka and his belief in God through the love of Father Damien, a haole priest. I think the story succeeds in giving the idea of forgiveness to the readers, and its plot, which starts with Pia going to Molokai, then raised at the moment Kamaka comes to the settlement with his wife and beginning to fall at the time Father Damien arrives at Kalawao. However, I wasn’t excited to read in a few beginning chapters because the story was just back and forth from the present and the past. After I came through those boring introduction chapters, I was really in the mood of reading when Pia was first landing on Molokai. I could imagine the picture and smell through the author’s words when the wild pig eating a dead body, the old volcano graveyard where people threw dead patients, and when Kamaka first experienced the old leprosy woman. I really like the author’s writing style because I can feel what the author described in the character’s emotion. Primarily through Pia’s character, I can see my youngish through what he felt, what he thought, and what he decided to do. Pia reminded me of my old days with many silly thoughts and doing things with the sentiment, and that behavior changed by the time I grew up. On the other hand, the ending was likely my prediction about it, I wasn’t surprised at all, so I was a little disappointed with it. The author gave the open end for the readers to think about what will happen next to every main character in the story, he also mentioned that the life in the settlement changed a lot after Father Damien’s arrival. They were kind of having everything they need to survive and can buy essential things with the money from the government issuing for everyone in Kalawao. Besides that, everyone who lived there felt like Kalawao became a living place rather than the dead place like they thought in the past, and the government was planning on planting trees to make Kalawao green again. I was happy with its open ending that makes the readers can think of many different ends by themselves. This is an excellent book that I will refer to everyone in my family to read because it contained many of the lessons inside its themes. The story also introduced some short of Hawaiian tales and Father Damien, an actual heroic person. Reading through it, we can understand about Hawaiian culture and especially Olelo Hawaii, a Hawaiian language.