Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn

This is a book steeped in Hawaiian mythology and anchored in modern truths. Ordinary laborers cannot afford to live in Hawaii, even if it is their ancestral home. This is on Obama's annual reading list, and I can see why it might speak to him, the little I know of his experience there. His grandparents, not native of course, lived very modestly, and his story is an outsider's story. When I finished this, I felt like there was more to the book than I could understand, my lack of experience hamstringing me. In the beginning Nainoa's family takes a boat tour in their native Hawaii. Noa falls overboard into shark-infested waters. He is only seven years old but instead of mauling him, the sharks carry Noa gently in their mouths, returning him to the boat unharmed. Noa’s rescue is miraculous not only because his life is spared but because it echoes an ancient Hawaiian legend that his mother Malia remembers from her childhood — one that suggests that Noa, now anointed, will be the savior of his family, perhaps even of his people. Initially that prophecy seems to come true. The burden of it over takes him, and his siblings, talented in their own rights, grow up bitter in it's shadow, and all three of them head to the mainland. When tragedy stikes, though, they find themselves banding together again, drawn to their homeland as if by a magnet. The modern Hawaii is in a sad state, where natives depend on the tourist trade to make a living, relying on the people who took their homeland in order to stay there. This one is an American tale, but there are many similar ones through out the New World.