Mortensen, Karen ; Phillips, Joy ; Eberlein, Sharna
Synopsis "Pele's Tears"
Claire Stone smiled serenely as her jet landed at Hilo International Airport on the gorgeous, Big Island of Hawaii after a spiritual retreat in Australia. But her homecoming turned out to be anything but pleasant as she walked off the plane right into trouble. Her once peaceful hale overlooking an impossibly blue Pacific from the jungle slopes of Puna had become a battleground. Her bright, wild, statuesque daughter, Michele, had become another statistic with a boyfriend jailed for domestic violence - and good riddance, thought Claire. Her best friend had been robbed and beaten --- and dead bodies were showing up on the black sand beach nearby. When a tough local detective targets her daughter in a murder investigation, it's time for Claire to start her own investigation in earnest. Claire is no amateur. She has hands-on experience in criminology going back to when she worked with her ex-husband's high-powered forensic agency back in California. Claire thought she'd left all that behind when she migrated to the Big Island ten years earlier to start a new life away from the rat race and an abusive spouse. Claire has always been a natural force, a woman of many talents, curious and concrete, compassionate and courageous, hard-nosed yet vulnerable. She not only wants to know, but be part of it all on the Big Island -- the Island's volcanic geology, its multi-layered, traditional culture and customs, its incredibly fertile nature where lava flows transform into jungle and nothing is ever what it seems. After traveling the world and exploring many strata of society, Claire found this island to be the place where she was destined to live. She lost no time in picking up the local languages and taking part in all its sacred and profane pleasures. It is a paradise, not of harps and prayers, but of people living juicy, spontaneous lives, taking lessons from the island's powerfully transformational nature. Here in this elemental place, greed can trump all goodness and good sense. Claire sees that the only answer is to recognize to whom we owe the treasure of life and riches truly, even though few see it that way. Goddess Pele personifies that worldview for Claire. She has to summon the courage to make it so, now, or lose what is most precious to her - the daughter she loves. Now she finds herself going deeper than ever into the island's piquant history and the secrets of her own family as the mystery of Pele's Tears draws her into a whirlpool of greed, deception and death.
