Guest post by Linda Ulleseit

Aloha! Hawaii is a place of beauty and allure. Everyone who has been there wants to go back, and everyone who hasn’t been there would like to go. What better way to take a virtual trip with your book club than to read a book set in Hawaii?

The Aloha Spirit takes place in Honolulu from the 1920s to the 1940s. Married at sixteen and the mother of two by nineteen, Dolores’s quest to find the aloha spirit within herself—and to escape the abuse of her alcoholic husband—leads her to flee Hawaii after the bombing of Pearl Harbor for California, where she seeks to make a new life for herself. But her past isn’t so easily left behind.

If you are hosting the book club event for your group, make sure everyone wears a Hawaiian lei, of course. Hawaiian shirts, slippers (flip-flops), shell jewelry, and a hibiscus flower in their hair completes the ensemble. Hawaiian party decorations are a staple of any party supply store, so you can get themed tablecloths, napkins, and centerpieces. To set the mood, play some slack key guitar, hula, ukelele, or an assortment of Hawaiian music.

If you want to stay simple with snacks and drinks, you can’t go wrong with POG juice (pineapple, orange, guava) and taro chips. If you want to be a bit more adventurous, try Frosted Hawaiian Coffee, Country Club Iced Tea, Mai Tai, Macadamia Cheese Ball, Hawaiian Spam® Bites, or Coconut Chicken Bites. Recipes can be found in the downloadable ebook.

Finally, you have to begin a discussion of the book. Use these questions as your guide:

The Aloha Spirit Book Club Discussion Questions 

• Did Dolores seem real to you and why? Did you identify with her and if so, how so? What did she learn about herself, how the world works and her role in it?

• What part did Maria and Ruth play in Dolores’s life? How was part 3 different for Dolores?

• Do you find the story interesting? What part was most surprising? Satisfying? Frustrating?

• What was your understanding of aloha before you started the book? Did that change as you read it? Did it change for Dolores?

• Given her situation, would you have made the same choices Dolores made? Why or why not?

• Are there any passages of special beauty or effectiveness that you’d like to highlight?

• Compare and contrast Manolo and Alberto. What attracted Dolores to each of these men? What frustrated her about each of them?

• Is the ending satisfying? If so, why? If not, why not…and how would you change it?

• If this was a book that will stay with you awhile, why?

• If you could ask the author a question, what would you ask? Have you read other books by the same author? If so, how does this book compare? 

I hope you enjoy every word of The Aloha Spirit and every minute of your book club event!

Mahalo!

Linda Ulleseit, born and raised in Saratoga, California, has an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University. She is a member of the Hawaii Writers Guild, Marketing Chair for Women Writing the West, and a founding member of Paper Lantern Writers. Linda is the author of Under the Almond Trees, which was a semifinalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Contest, and The Aloha Spirit. Her books are the stories of women in her family who were extraordinary but unsung.