Most Popular Books by James D. Houston

The true story of a Japanese American family during World War II.

Snow Mountain Passage is a powerful retelling of the most dramatic of our pioneer stories—the ordeal of the Donner Party, with its cast of young and old risking all, its imprisoning snows, its rumors of cannibalism. James Houston takes us inside this central American myth in a compelling new way that only a novelist can achieve. The people whose dreams, courage, terror, ingenuity, and fate we share are James Frazier Reed, one of the leaders of the Donner Party, and his wife and four children—in particular his eight-year-old daughter, Patty. From the moment we meet Reed—proud, headstrong, yet a devoted husband and father—traveling with his family in the "Palace Car," a huge, specially built covered wagon transporting the Reeds in grand style, the stage is set for trouble. And as they journey across the country, thrilling to new sights and new friends, coping with outbursts of conflict and constant danger, trouble comes. It comes in the fateful choice of a wrong route, which causes the group to arrive at the foot of the Sierra Nevada too late to cross into the promised land before the snows block the way. It comes in the sudden fight between Reed and a drover—a fight that exiles Reed from the others, sending him solo over the mountains ahead of the storms. We follow Reed during the next five months as he travels around northern California, trying desperately to find means and men to rescue his family. And through the amazingly imagined "Trail Notes" of Patty Reed, who recollects late in life her experiences as a child, we also follow the main group, progressively stranded and starving on the Nevada side of the Sierras. Snow Mountain Passage is an extraordinary tale of pride and redemption. What happens—who dies, who survives, and why—is brilliantly, grippingly told.

From the acclaimed author of Snow Mountain Passage comes this richly evocative novel that follows a half-Indian, half-Hawai''ian woman and her complex relationship with the last king of Hawai''i.When talk show host Sheridan Brody finds the journals of his great grandmother Nani Keala (aka Nancy Callahan), he uncovers a mythic, unknown tale. Nani, a shy girl from a remote Indian village, met the Hawai''ian king, David Kalakaua, on his grand progress by train across the United States in 1881, eventually returning with him to Honolulu. There, as his young ally and protégée, ever more assured and charming, she played an integral role in his attempt to revive the monarchy and spirit of his people and, eventually, witnessed the mysterious circumstances surrounding his downfall. Deeply engaging through its vivid portrayal of California and Hawai''i at the end of the nineteenth century, Bird of Another Heaven is a masterful portrait of an era long past.

"In a dozen very personal stories and sketches, James D. Houston writes about a wide range of men--among them, his Tennessee ancestors, his Texas uncles, his California barber, his college football coach, his father, fighter pilots, explorers, musicians, and drifters. Some are comrades, some are heroes, some are adversaries, some only appear to him in dreams. To this realm of male-to-male relations and manly concerns, he brings a ... blend of honesty, comedy and compassion"--From book jacket.

Surfing traces the history of the sport from its beginnings in ancient Hawaii through the mid 1960s. This revised edition of the 1966 classic features extensive illustrations, a new introduction, and articles by Mark Twain and Jack London recounting their observations on surfing. The book also explores the development of the surfboard and follows surfing''s timeline from the earliest legends to the accomplishments of modern surfing heroes.

The San Andreas Fault is both a real and a metaphorical player in this novel of northern California in the early 70s. Set on a ranch near Monterey Bay, it explores relationships in a family jarred by the return of a son from Vietnam, almost whole but shaken and confused. His return coincides with a series of bizarre killings that panic the community--a reminder that in the legendary land of promise abundant possibilities and agents of destruction live side by side.

One of Hawaii''s "living treasures" is the subject of this biography, Hawaiian Son: The Life and Music of Eddie Kamae. It celebrates the personal journey of an extraordinary musician and pioneering filmmaker, Eddie Kamae. The book was written by award-winning author James D. Houston (1933-2009) in close collaboration with Kamae, and was designed by Barbara Pope of Honolulu-based ''Ai Pohaku Press. The 260-page book includes more than 60 historical photographs, drawings and album covers that help to chart the high points of an influential career that has spanned more than half a century. As a young man in the late 1940s, Kamae developed a jazz picking style that forever changed the status of the ukulele. He became its reigning virtuoso. For 20 years the legendary band he founded with Gabby Pahinui, The Sons of Hawaii, played a leading role in the Hawaiian cultural renaissance. By the mid 1970s Kamae himself had become a folk-hero, known for his instrumental genius and for a vigorous singing style that carries the spirit of an ancient vocal tradition into the 21st century. During the 1980s, while continuing to perform, arrange, and lead the band, Kamae launched a second career as a filmmaker, once again proving to be a cultural pioneer. In documentaries such as Listen to the Forest and Words, Earth & Aloha he found a filmic voice that speaks from deep within his own island world. Kamae''s personal journey is measured by the many teachers Kamae, now 85, has met along the way, from Mary Kawena Pukui and Pilahi Paki, to ''Iolani Luahine, San Li''a Kalainaina, and "Papa" Henry Auwae. Dancers and singers, storytellers, healers, and elders have guided him in his long quest to find the sources of a rich tradition and thus to find himself.

Sample Poems DictionaryAs a small south american squirrel inhabiting mostly mountainous regions would feed on lizards half-way between poles of the tropics, I too would fall heartbreaked in the settlement of feuds of the fields of kentucky.When the moss grows high between the perennials and disordered mimmocks weep, these dainty fastidious gestating mammals break for leavened bread and sup between the rows of trees, lifting like friars some heavy books in the sunlight''s morning windows where the mollusks row in scion''s quadragesimal phyla.Found TextThe deer mistook their reflections for deer and the deer mistook their reflections for other deer and the deer apparently mistook their reflections for sheep and what the deer mistook their reflections for isn''t certain and the deer were removed from the scene, being deer, before being removed and mistaking reflections of the other deer for the sheep the deer were removed and the deer deciding to join them joined the deer having mistaken reflections of sheep for the deer having mistaken reflections of sheep for the deer in the plate glass windows. The New LifeI eat steak and live on the big neon avenue and fear strangers, admire my neighbors, the drug store, and the bus,I was an addict live addicted to the avenue, in the dark folds late at night, addicted to sleep and lavender,I went into the liquor store to buy a bottle of wine, loving you and the liquor store, the lavender bottles, the many directionsa_ .PART TWOToday I am rivets of sails in a log cabin where Jack London lived in Alaska until they moved his cabin here where we collect the change to buy our drinks and eat the free hors d''oeuvres, where the neighbors are somewhat pleased beside the railroad trains, where the vague sense of the Union Pacific is with opssums of freeways and you, where the airplanes fill the plastic sky, where the fish are brightly colored on the lawn, where an underwater bird is pummeled on the sidestreet, where we take hallucinogens and wander through museums, where the people construct the atificial ponds, where