Marty Langsmith is only five years old when a strange thunder rolls
across the Hawaiian sky and life as she knows it explodes into flames.
With her mother, April, and hundreds of other women and children, Marty
is evacuated from the ruins of Pearl Harbor and sent into a brave new
world overshadowed by uncertainty and grief. Feeling abandoned by her
deployed Army officer father in the wake of the attack, Marty is haunted
by nightmares of the lion in the lei shop, a creature that's said to
devour happy children. But as the years pass, mother and daughter slowly
begin to embrace their new life and make peace with the pain of the
past. Spanning the tumultuous war years, The Lion in the Lei Shop
deftly recaptures a dramatic chapter of American history.
Originally published in 1970 and reissued for a new generation of
readers as part of renowned librarian Nancy Pearl's Book Lust
Rediscoveries series, this lyrical novel gives a rarely heard voice to
the women and children of Pearl Harbor.