Susanna Moore's novel is set in Hawaii whose shimmering beauty and meloncholy traditions are at once seductive and dangerously hard to leave. Or so they prove for Clio, a thirteen year-old runaway who is raised by her eccentric aunt Emma, a collector of legends, myths, and rites of their native island. Emma teaches Clio what it means to swim out of the currents of time, to exchange her small past for a grand one. But when that same past begins to take on a crushing weight, Clio on impulse marries a well-known Hollywood actor, providing her with the promise of escape from her family and the entanglements of island life.
