The Descendants

Jonathan Davis reads in a strong voice, but each sentence ends in a pause, a vocal style that fits the story's main character, Matthew King, a man who is questioning his life. After Matthew decides to sell the last parcel of his family land in Hawaii and disconnect his comatose wife from life support, he discovers she had planned to divorce him for a new lover. Further, his 10-year-old daughter is mentally disturbed, and his 17-year-old daughter is recovering from drug addiction. As Davis inserts pregnant pauses into his delivery, we get a strong sense that Matthew doesn't know what's going to come at him next. Once Matthew forms a solid vision of his future, Davis's reading reflects the change with stronger, surer tones. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

March 5, 2007
Hemmings's bittersweet debut novel, an expansion of her first published short story ("The Minor Wars," from House of Thieves
and originally published in StoryQuarterly
), stars besieged and wryly introspective attorney Matt King, the land-rich descendant of Hawaiian royalty and American missionaries and entrepreneurs. He wrestles with the decision of whether to keep his swath of valuable inherited land or sell it to a real estate developer. But even more critical, Matt also has to decide whether to pull the plug on his wife, Joanie, who has been in an irreversible coma for 23 days following a boat-racing accident. Then Matt finds out that Joanie was having an affair with real estate broker Brian Speer, impelling him to travel with his two daughters—precocious 10-year-old Scottie and fresh from rehab 17-year-old Alex—from Oahu to Kauai to confront Brian. Matt finds out the truth about Joanie and Brian, which influences his decision about what to do with his family's on-the-block land and complicates his plans for Joanie. Matt's journey with his girls forms the emotional core of this sharply observed, frequently hilarious and intermittently heartbreaking look at a well-meaning but confused father trying to hold together his unconventional family.