House of Many Gods — Kiana Davenport

Abandoned by her mother as a child, Ana is raised by her extended family on the lawless Wai`anae Coast of 0`ahu. Against the odds, she becomes a physician. While tending victims of Hurricane 'Iniki on the neighboring island of Kaua`i, she meets Nikolai, a Russian filmmaker with a violent and tragic past who can confront reality only through his unique prism of lies. Yet he is dedicated to recording the ecological horrors in his motherland and across the Pacific. As their lives inextricably intertwine, Ana and Nikolai embark on an odyssey that sweeps the reader from rural Hawaii to the forbidding Arctic wastes of Russia, from the poverty-stricken Wai'anae Coast to the glittering harshness of "new Moscow" and the haunting, faded beauty St. Petersburg. With stunning narrative inventiveness, Kiana Davenport has created a timeless epic of loss and remembrance, of the search for family and identity, and, ultimately, of the redemptive power of love.