In early April we met the editor of a Virginia business magazine over lunch in Roanoke, Virginia. Unexpectedly, three full months later - on the very day we arrived home to Hawai'i - this book review greeted us. We thought we'd share it.
VALLEY BUSINESS FRONT, JULY 2011, BOOK REVIEW
Spiritual Life
Inette Miller's Grandmothers Whisper (Infinity, $17.95) is a gripping memoir from a former war correspondent and respected journalist. She gave up a safe, secure, traditional life to follow a dream, an idea, and the spirituality that was hidden deep in her soul and aroused by a Hawaiian with a nearly unpronounceable name, 'Iokepa Hanalei 'Imaikalani. Miller was a single Jewish mother on vacation in Hawaii when she met 'Iokepa, son of a Hawaiian father and a mother from Idaho. He is a man with a distinctly native Hawaiian look and the deep spirituality that defines his people. She shed her previous life when they bonded and began a life of deep spirituality, respect for native custom, belief and uniqueness.
I had lunch with the two of them recently and it was a memorable hour, full of the kind of unbridled excitement that defines the book, the deep revelation of two people obviously much in love and the sharing of beliefs that are foreign to most of us—and frankly, quite attractive and sensible. The book is worth the investment of your time. It will move you.
—Dan Smith
(The reviewer: Dan Smith is the Editor of the Valley Business FRONT.)