”;The Japanese in Hawaii: Okage Sama De”;

By Dorothy Ochiai Hazama and Jane Okamoto Kemejiji / Bess Press / $22.95

This groundbreaking work on Hawaii's Japanese immigrant community was published in 1986 and has been reissued by Bess Press with new biographical sketches and photographs. The foreword is by U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye and the afterword by U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono—both products of that vibrant heritage.

“;Okage sama de”; is an expression of gratitude, which the authors apply both to the immigrants' homeland and their adopted home of Hawaii.

”;Between the Deep Blue Sea and Me”;

By Lurline Wailana McGregor / Kamehameha Publishing / $15

Moana has a stable job and love life in Los Angeles, but when her father dies, she finds the pull of family and duty in Hawaii too hard to resist. Dreams, memories, spiritual encounters and the discovery of a mysterious ki'i (a stone carving of a shark), combine to draw Moana into an ancestral history she had never understood.

The writer fills her story with a gripping sense of cultural detail and includes a message about the rightful placement of native antiquities.