Lehua. Ka’ao a ka Wahine, [Lehua, The Romance of a Hawaiian Girl] A coming-of-age tale at the ‘Changing-of-the-Gods’. \tHawai'i is the most culturally diverse and newest of the fifty United States. Hawaiian history includes centuries of royal rule terminating in the first wobbly American experiment in Pacific colonialism. The nature of that colonialism included forced political and religious upheavals in the Kingdom of Hawai'i with the death of King Kamehameha I in 1819. \tAt the command of Queen Ka’ahumanu to deny the old native religion, the ali’i obey immediately. The kahuna become criminals (and remain such for the next 150 years). This leaves no one to lead the commoners over this very difficult transition to an extremely conservative Calvinism. These changes force Lehua to recognize her kulena (responsibility) to lead that is thrust upon her. \tAn eighteen year old Hawaiian ali'i (noble) girl becomes a woman during this time of great cultural change. Her entire way of life crumbles around her. As it does, we learn about the rich Hawaiian culture and the losses suffered when white merchants and planters exploit the land. Ignorant Christian missionaries, bent on the ‘White Man's Burden', replace the kapu (taboos) of the kahuna (holy men) with the ‘fear of God‘ and subsequently disrupt the spiritual, political and, even agricultural, lives of the Kanaka (natives). \tFamilies separate, self-destruct and form new liaisons across cultural divides under external pressures. Lehua plays a major role in this transition as she and her ohana (family) live their lives and loves against the backdrop of a dying Polynesia. \tLehua, recognizes the benefit to women of the lifting of the sacred taboos, but she also sees that all of the structure of the Kanaka culture is undermined and only the garbled disordered arguments and demands of forty years of random visits by outsiders is strewn about in confusion. \tHer most immediate concern is that the ancient religion posited that the ali’i ruled because they were direct descendants of the gods--proven by the genealogies handed down generation by generation. \tIf this tenet is dissolved, on what basis is she, or any ali’i, now to rule? And on what set of values, pono, are the elders to teach their children? In fact, what is to prevent whole scale violence and chaos. \tArguments within families and among families ring out across the land, with only the voice of a high chiefess, Christian convert, attempting to lead in a new direction. Soon the first of twelve companies of Calvinist missionaries arrive to eradicate, to smother every thing Kanaka and finally for their children to dominate the financial and political lives of all residents, . Lehua’s story starts soon after the lifting of the kapu. She argues with sibling and parents and is sent off to study hula in order to keep peace in the family and perhaps to keep the family alive in the jockeying for royal favor. \tOn Kaua’i she takes up the cause of the hungry children whose parents have been taken off their farms to cut sandal wood for the in-debt chiefs. In danger of being kidnapped by restless chiefs willing to take advantage of the volatile political situation (and a weak king), Lehua is rescued by a Chinese/Hawaiian cowboy with whom she falls in love. \tHe embodies all of the externals that will impact the Kingdom of Hawaii for the next 80 years until it is seized by the Unite States. \tBut first, he takes her on a ‘road trip’ up and over the mountain in order to get her to safety. And she is introduced to the great black horse.... \tSafe among her ali’i community, she begins the dramatic conflict between the pulls of the old system and the promises of the new. In one, she is ensnared by a drunk king and rescued again by the forbidden lover. \tShe stands the ho’o ho’o pono (family trial), loses, but is rescued again by the great black horse that has become her symbol of freedom \tThen the couple deals with all of the legal, cultural, prejudicial, regal and tribal problems that stand in the way of their marriage and bares for the reader, in human terms, that unfolding history.