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by Amy Hartman (Author)
Newly wed Kittie, a dressmaker recruited by missionaries, sails with her husband to Hawai'i in 1829 where her life begins to hopelessly unravel. The islands are nothing what she'd expected, her husband's heart proves blacker than his bible, her best friend Emmie is sent to another island, and she meets the vaquero Diego who makes the air suddenly taste like sugar and sunshine.
She had come to the islands so triumphantly, now she will flee back to New Bedford before dawn. Her gowns, like shadows of memories in the yellow light of the whale-oil lantern, are cast across the bed, the ladder back chair, and her sewing table.
The night of exhuming her past, dress by dress, is nearly over. Time to carefully wrap them in oil cloth and pack them into her pine sea chest to survive the long, damp voyage home. The morning stars will soon be fading above the Fair Wind-it will be Kittie's wedding ship as soon as they are under full sail. She notices a brown leather billfold that had sat almost invisible like a chameleon on the bottom of the trunk. She slowly holds it close to the smoky lantern and brings herself to open it. And then her perfectly mended future rips apart.
