Five Years Later…
Right now I’m in the process of looking for a literary agent to represent my novel Mauka. Agents often ask for a “logline,” which is a one-sentence description. Here’s my long one:
“When an unexpected letter asking forgiveness for a gang rape she’d kept secret for sixty years sends June Nakashima angrily back to Hilo to write about it, she’s not expecting the sudden, late-in-life love affair that blossoms with her high school friend Max Nelson, a contract archaeologist and writer who left Harvard grad school without a PhD and has been living quietly in Hilo, and is then, to his surprise, again enmeshed in a fifty-year-old murder.”
Although Mauka is fiction, I built the “gang rape” and the “fifty-year-old murder” on incidents from my own life. I wasn’t directly involved in the 1959 Hilo rapes, although the victim who put the boys in jail was a friend. I was caught up in a friend’s 1969 murder both then and in 2017, as I describe in my memoir Shibai: Remembering Jane Britton’s Murder.
But today’s posting is about the real Hilo High rapes (there were many victims, all but one of whom kept silent). I’ve never forgotten how brave the victim who told was (Mauka is dedicated to her). The fictional June, knowing how she’d be shamed if she told, was afraid to – and that’s part of what she wrestles with as a seventy-something adult.
A couple of weeks ago I was going through old material I brought from Hilo, and the Hilo Intermediate School literary magazine Ka Hua Olelo slid out of the pile. I was a 7th grader when it came out. I leafed through it, and an author’s name caught my eye.
He was one of the rapists; in fact, the one who picked up my friend and delivered her to the forest where he and the others raped her (and were eventually tried, convicted, and did time). I’ve redacted his name, even though he’s been dead for years (a suicide at about 40; he didn’t do well as an adult).
But here he is, probably 13, writing a sweet little piece about his parakeet. Then in five years he’s leading a rape gang. What happened in the interim? I have no idea. I could look for everything I have from Hilo Intermediate and Hilo High, to see if I can track him in any way. But I’m not going to, because I’m not writing memoir, and the fictional Mauka rapist who contacted the fictional June isn’t based on what I know about any of the boys. I do admit to being curious.
So.
After finding the rapist on Page 31, I went to the autograph page at the end – and there was the victim, wishing me “Aloha and best wishes always.” Of course I’ve redacted her name.
Should I work what I found into Mauka? I’d have to make Ka Hua Olelo turn up. June lost everything in the 1960 tsunami, so a copy can’t come from her. Max landed back in his family house and I suppose that after reconnecting with June he might have poked around looking for items from their youth. In Mauka they write about their Hilo years from memory. The only physical prompt is a bullet hole in Max’s old bedroom wall.
But that’s another story.
