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A review by emiged
Belonging to Heaven by Gale Sears
4.0
An ambitious project, Belonging to Heaven covers a span of 36 years from 1843 to 1879 and the setting ranges from California to the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawaii) to Salt Lake City, Utah.
This touching story is told in three sections titled aptly: Faith, Hope, and Charity. Over the course of the book, the main focus shifts from the earliest missionaries that were called to Hawaii - primarily George Q. Cannon - to one of the earliest Hawaiian converts - Jonathan Napela - and finally to the leper colony on a remote corner of Molokai. This shift allows the author to tell more of the story, but it also felt like the focus wandered a bit. I wonder if it would have been better told in two separate books, the first focused on Elder Cannon and his companions and their struggles with the difficult language and foreign culture, and the second telling Jonathan Napela's story of conversion and faithfulness.
I loved the beautiful, descriptive language throughout and the generous sprinkling of Hawaiian - I found myself sounding out the phrases and trying them repeatedly until they came off my tongue easily. And respect for the Hawaiian culture, in contrast to more imperialistic, colonialist attitudes I half-expected, permeated each page. Speaking to President Brigham Young, Elder Cannon reports "the missionaries who were most successful with the Hawaiian people were those who respected their goodness and culture, the ones who acknowledged their simple faith and openness." Many good and uplifting Hawaiian traditions are continued and embraced by the American missionaries. And the final section is a moving story of interfaith work, service, and love.
Belonging to Heaven is obviously thoroughly- and well-researched, and I appreciated the attention to detail both regarding the early Church and native Hawaiian culture and history. I liked that each chapter ended with a handful of bullet points further illuminating some event or action from the chapter; this seems a better idea than constant footnotes that pull the reader out of the flow of the story or throwing all of the information in an appendix that is less likely to be read. However, some of the chapter-ending footnotes referenced events several decades later than the story, some repeated information from the chapter or from earlier chapter-ending footnotes, and some simply seemed odd, trivial, or out of place. They also seemed understandably biased toward LDS history, and I would have liked a bit more Hawaiian history as well.
To read the rest of the review, visit Build Enough Bookshelves.
This touching story is told in three sections titled aptly: Faith, Hope, and Charity. Over the course of the book, the main focus shifts from the earliest missionaries that were called to Hawaii - primarily George Q. Cannon - to one of the earliest Hawaiian converts - Jonathan Napela - and finally to the leper colony on a remote corner of Molokai. This shift allows the author to tell more of the story, but it also felt like the focus wandered a bit. I wonder if it would have been better told in two separate books, the first focused on Elder Cannon and his companions and their struggles with the difficult language and foreign culture, and the second telling Jonathan Napela's story of conversion and faithfulness.
I loved the beautiful, descriptive language throughout and the generous sprinkling of Hawaiian - I found myself sounding out the phrases and trying them repeatedly until they came off my tongue easily. And respect for the Hawaiian culture, in contrast to more imperialistic, colonialist attitudes I half-expected, permeated each page. Speaking to President Brigham Young, Elder Cannon reports "the missionaries who were most successful with the Hawaiian people were those who respected their goodness and culture, the ones who acknowledged their simple faith and openness." Many good and uplifting Hawaiian traditions are continued and embraced by the American missionaries. And the final section is a moving story of interfaith work, service, and love.
Belonging to Heaven is obviously thoroughly- and well-researched, and I appreciated the attention to detail both regarding the early Church and native Hawaiian culture and history. I liked that each chapter ended with a handful of bullet points further illuminating some event or action from the chapter; this seems a better idea than constant footnotes that pull the reader out of the flow of the story or throwing all of the information in an appendix that is less likely to be read. However, some of the chapter-ending footnotes referenced events several decades later than the story, some repeated information from the chapter or from earlier chapter-ending footnotes, and some simply seemed odd, trivial, or out of place. They also seemed understandably biased toward LDS history, and I would have liked a bit more Hawaiian history as well.
To read the rest of the review, visit Build Enough Bookshelves.