Haole Wife

Seeking to escape the shame of her past as an unwed mother, Ina Marie leaves her home state of Iowa and accepts a teaching position in Hawaii. There, she meets Dr. Clyde McNeill, and the two marry in the summer of 1920. As the wife of a plantation doctor, Ina Marie enjoys modest privileges and cherishes the time she shares with her young daughter, Leilani. That fragile happiness is shattered on a stormy night in 1923 when Clyde drowns while tending to a patient. Suddenly widowed and evicted from the plantation home, Ina Marie is left to rebuild her life and protect her daughter on her own. Set against the sugar plantation culture of Hawaii and the sweeping social changes of the era, Ina Marie’s journey unfolds during the turbulence of Prohibition, the rise of the automobile, and the newly won right of women to vote. Haole Wife, a work of historical fiction by Margaret Drake, tells the powerful story of one woman’s resilience and determination to survive—and redefine herself—in 1920s Hawaii.