Sara Ackerman. Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers. Mira, 2018.

Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers is a little gem. It is published by a publisher better known for cookie-cutter plots and quick, light reads. This is neither.

The island is the Big Island of Hawaii. That attracted me. We have made it clear that we like the Big Island. It is the closest thing to a tropical paradise. I suspect that the author, a lifelong Hawaii resident feels the same way.

The story is told in a slightly different manner from most novels. Chapters are headed by one of two characters or narrators: Hawaii resident Violet and her seven-year-daughter Ella. Many stories these days have chapters told by different points of view, but what is distinctive about Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers is that the “Ella” chapters are told in the first person, but the “Violet” chapters are told in the third person.

Because Violet is the adult and we get a lot of background and description from her point of view, the “Violet” chapters are two or three times longer than the “Ella” chapters.

The story begins in 1942. Obviously, Hawaii is on a war footing. Though Pearl Harbor was on a different island, the Big Islanders also have to take the war seriously. There are shore patrols, blackouts, submarine sightings—and all kinds of rumors. And it has been very hard for Violet and Ella Iverson.

Violet’s husband Herman was principal of the local grammar school in Honoka’a, on the north side of the island. I recall being on the southern tip and aware that the next landfall heading south was Antarctica. Similarly, we are reminded the next landfall heading north from the island is Alaska. One day Herman goes out to the north shore in an area overlooking the ocean—it is mostly cliffs—and he does not return. No body is ever found and no one seems to know what has happened to him or what he was trying to do.

Violet’s life is basically on hold. She feels she cannot do much of anything without some kind of closure. She is a teacher at the school and continues there, but spends her time trying to find clues and annoying the sheriff and others to see if they have discovered anything new or remember anything else.

Ella knows something. She tells us that right away, but she also says that she is not telling anyone what she knows. She is clearly afraid. She wets herself sometimes at school. She insists on going to the local Japanese school. Since the war began, the Japanese school has been taught in English and her two closest friends are Hiro and Umi, a brother and sister who are neighbors and of Japanese ancestry. Of course, between thirty and forty percent of the population of the islands is Japanese. In the course of the story their father is arrested and brought to an internment camp. Violet and their mother Setsuko try to find out the charges, but all there is is suspicion.

Violet has a roommate, a single woman named Jean. Jean’s brother Zach has joined the Marines and gets stationed for training on the Big Island. Even today, a major part of the center of the island, the Saddle (so called because it is a high plain between the two highest peaks on the island) is home to a military reservation. When on liberty, Zach brings some buddies with him to visit his sister. Soon relationships develop.

Tensions mount for many reasons. The Marines are going to be sent somewhere to fight. Reports coming back from Saipan and Tarawa give us a sense of the intensity of the fighting. Readers familiar with the War in the Pacific might guess what possibilities could await the young men.

There are tensions with the household and some of their female friends because they become attached to a couple of the Marines who visit them. Are they just there for a fling, or are they truly interested? Will they even think of them when they return home to the mainland?

Ella, meanwhile, is comfortable at the Japanese school until it is closed down. She does not want to return to the other school. Animals bring her some peace. She has a pet cat and rescues a nearly-plucked chicken (some chickens are wild there), and one of the Marines occasionally brings a lion with him.

That is right. Before the war the Marine named Parker was training as a veterinarian and worked at a zoo on the mainland. The zoo in Hilo had a lion cub that was not being fed by its mother, and Parker said he would take it. Many Marine units will adopt a mascot, traditionally a bulldog, so Parker’s unit adopts the lion for its mascot. The lion is still a cub, though growing bigger. We are told it is the size of large German Shepherd. In a note at the end, the author tells us that her grandfather was a principal of a school in Hawaii during the war, and that one of the Marine units on the island actually did have a lion as a mascot.

Parker and Ella take a liking to each other, and soon Violet finds herself attracted to him. But, of course, she is torn. What if Herman suddenly shows up? Was he kidnapped? Did he leave on some kind of secret mission? The soldiers and Marines they encounter complain how their letters home get censored, and some never get sent. Loose lips sink ships and all that. How can she know?

Jean, Violet, and Setsuko earn a little money on the side by selling pies to the men stationed on the Saddle. They set up a table in a flea market area and sell chocolate honeycomb pies and moonshine pies. The military men love them. The ladies call their brand Honey Cow Pies. Honey cow is the way many of the soldiers pronounce Honoka’a.

Island of Soldiers and Sweet Pies is an affectionate tale about Hawaii. At the same time, it is dead serious. There is, after all, a war going on and a missing husband and father. Ella is really too young to understand the reasons for the war or the prejudice against the Japanese. Indeed, Ella’s narrations may remind the reader of Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, except Ella is hurting. Yes, there is a sense of injustice, but the reader can tell there is more going on even if she says she can’t say why she keeps things to herself.

One of the Marines misrepresents himself to one of the young ladies on the island. The injustice here is that he treated her wrong. She thinks of a way to get even with him. How she does it is quite clever. Readers could learn something from her.

Violet’s perspective interested this male reader. She loved Herman, her missing husband. But the relationship was not terribly romantic. She had a lousy home life in Minnesota. Her father let their farm run down, and then he disappeared. He would write occasionally, but she never saw him again. After half a dozen years he wrote her mother to say he had failed and was not returning. We are told little about Violet’s alcoholic stepfather, Mr. Smudge she called him, except that she was glad when Herman sent her tickets to Hawaii so they could get married.

So she calls Herman her savior. He delivered her from frigid Minnesota to tropical Hawaii. He loved her, and treated her and everyone else with respect. Everyone liked and respected him. As Shakespeare would say, he was an honorable man, and she admired him. He was a good father, and she was thankful for that. She truly does miss him. Character counts.

Parker is different. He rides in the rodeo and looks good without a shirt. He is caring and likes Ella, but there is also some chemistry between Parker and Violet—their relationship remains chaste, but they can’t wait to see each other. She will remain faithful to Herman, just in case. I could not help think a little of Casablanca. Herman is Victor Lazlo; Parker is Rick. One could say that the perfect man would somehow be a combination of the two.

We meet a number of other characters that populate the island: fishermen, a moonshiner, a popular shop teacher, the Marines’ captain. Irene Ferreira is a telephone operator and for that reason seems to know more about what is going on on the island than anyone. She also has a crush on Jean’s brother. There are many interesting people. And most of them do care for one another as best as can be under the circumstances.

To say this is like To Kill a Mockingbird is only partly true. I was also reminded of the stories by Chris Bohjalian. He writes about a different distinctive state, Vermont, but in his stories there is underlying pain, crime, and family conflict. There is clearly an element of those things here as well, especially concerning Herman’s disappearance—not exactly Gothic, but intense. As I suggested earlier, it is unusual to see a piece with literary quality from this publisher, but I am glad someone picked it up.