Spoils of Eden

Many of the characters who appear in
The Spoils of Eden
are not fictional. Woven into the story of the Derrington and Easton families are real people who played an important role in the history of nineteenth-century Hawaii. The following lists include several of the more important characters and terms from Hawaii’s colorful past. (Not listed are historical locations, buildings, and objects.)

Claus Spreckel —
the sugar king from California.

Hiram Bingham —
one of the first missionaries to Hawaii who helped create the Hawaiian alphabet, which was used to translate the Bible into Hawaiian.

John L. Stevens —
American Foreign Minister (political) to Hawaii.

Kamehameha I monarchy —
Kamehameha the Great conquered the other independent island kingdoms around him to form one kingdom, which he named after his island, Hawaii.

King David Kalakaua —
who ruled over Hawaii for seventeen years until his death in 1891; the second elected monarch and the first to visit the United States.

Lorrin Thurston —
member of the Hawaiian league and a grandson of pioneer missionary Asa Thurston.

Priest Damian —
a Belgian priest who was ordained in Honolulu and assigned at his own request to the leper colony on Molokai in 1873, where he died in 1889 after contracting the disease.

Queen Liliuokalani —
the last reigning monarch of the kingdom of Hawaii, who was deposed in 1893; a musician and songwriter, she wrote Hawaii’s most famous song, “Aloha Oe.”

Walter Murray Gibson —
King Kalakaua’s controversial prime minister, who was eventually run out of Hawaii and died on his way to San Francisco.

Queen Emma Kaleleonalani —
who in the 1870s had a cousin who was a leper at Molokai.

alii —
chief, princely

aloha —
love, hello, good-bye

auwe —
an expression of lament; alas!

haole —
foreigner, especially white person; Caucasian

hapa-haole —
person of mixed race; Hawaiian-Caucasian

hoolaulei —
festive celebration

kahu —
caregiver or nurse

kahuna —
sorcerer or priest of the ancient native religion

kokua —
helper; a person who would live with and assist a leper

lanai —
porch, terrace, veranda

luna
— overseer

makua —
parent or any relative of ones parents

muumuu —
gown, Mother Hubbard gown

Pake —
Chinese

wahine —
woman

Honolulu, Hawaii
June 1891

S
unlight filtered through leafy palms as Eden Derrington walked the path to Kalihi Hospital. Birdsong filled the trees while crimson and lime hummingbirds fed among deep-throated flowers. Nearby, the white sand glistened as waves gently stroked the shore. Small ivory clouds moved lazily across the powder-blue sky … though an ominous sense of trouble shadowed the tropical morning. While appreciating the beauty around her, Eden considered the darkness that lay ahead.

Somewhere ahead a bird shrieked in unexpected fright, reminding her of the presence of evil. Once, in an even more glorious garden than the tropics, evil had brought spiritual and physical ruin to its inhabitants.

As Eden visualized Satan entering Paradise as a serpent, she quickened her pace through a dusky grove of palms and came into the sunlight.
Father God, how beautiful that garden must have been!
For even now, with the curse of thorns, thistles, death, and decay, the beauty of Your creation still remains
.

Later that morning at Kalihi Hospital, Eden slipped unseen from the Hawaii Board of Health meeting and quickened her steps down the hall. She could hear the doctors’ muffled voices in continued discussion as she approached the sunny waiting room near the front of the hospital. Wearing an ankle-length, gray cotton dress overlaid with a traditional nurses white pinafore emblazoned with a red cross, she stepped outdoors and hurried down the steps. In her bag were official documents, signed by the Board, and she was determined to present them at Hawaiiana Plantation as the Board had charged her.

Eden’s dark, winged brows came together. The two influential doctors who had arrived late for the meeting worried her. Entering somewhat distracted, they soon realized their colleagues had already decided the matter at hand. At first they seemed amenable to the majority decision, but looking toward her, they’d hesitated. The younger doctor had drummed his fingers on the desk with disapproval, while the older gentleman kept sliding his spectacles up and down the narrow bridge of his nose.

Eden had the distinct impression the esteemed doctors thought her too young. If they had only known she’d once been engaged to the man the Board was making an inquiry about, they
certainly
would not have entrusted her with this task.

The tropic sun now blazed from a clear sky. She breathed in the fresh trade wind that kept the kingly palms swaying. It cooled her face and ruffled her wavy dark hair, partially pinned up off her neck in Victorian fashion and graced with a perky white nurse’s cap.

Hurrying past the familiar shrubs of massive red and yellow hibiscus, her senses were filled with the heady fragrance given off by the clusters of pink flowers on the jacaranda trees. Insects buzzed and tiny finches twittered from the branches. Together they wove a chorus of praise to their Creator.

The hospital’s flower bed, ablaze with color, reminded her of a
Fourth of July celebration in the States.
No
, she scolded herself. Don’t even think about independence right now. Was there not enough to concern her already without more discord between her and Rafe Easton, the ambitious young man shed so recently been engaged to marry?

The issue of independence hovered in her mind. Grandfather Ainsworth Derrington was soon to return from Washington D.C. Upon his arrival she would be called to account for her continued support of the Hawaiian queen. Grandfather was a firm annexationist, and joining other prominent sugar growers in Hawaii, he had been meeting with sympathetic members of the U.S. Senate hoping to garner support for making the Hawaiian islands a territory of the United States. Cousin Zachary Derrington, who ran Great-aunt Nora’s newspaper, the
Derrington Gazette
, had been castigated in public for writing in favor of Queen Liliuokalani.

What if that incident were only the beginning? Where the discord would end was anyone’s guess. Matters were coming to a climax, and it wasn’t likely to end without bloodshed. Already there were wounded hearts, broken friendships … and broken romances. She glanced at the empty ring finger of her left hand.