Lava: A Novel - Tapa dura

"A beautiful, sensuous, volatile novel, pressurized with dormant passions, filled with fire". -- Bob Shacochis

Hailed As One Of The Most exciting novels of 1997 by Publishers Weekly, this is a haunting tale of obsessive love and how an otherwise strong, young woman disentangles herself from it. A tragic twist of fate brings Kinau's ex-husband, Ivan, back to Hilo, the Big Island of Hawaii. Although she has done everything in her power to quell her passion for Ivan, who has since remarried, Kinau finds herself under his spell again. Against a mesmerizing backdrop of Hawaiian mythology, history, and awe-inspiring storms of nature, Kinau realizes that she must give herself fully to the relationship once again if she ever hopes to walk away from it.

"Love -- the kind that can't be cured, but only endured -- moves through this mysterious and haunting novel. Pamela Ball has a voice all her own, intense and memorable". -- Andrea Barret, author of Ship Fever

At the novel's beginning, Kinau says of her husband, gone five years and with another woman, "I could not tell if I was more possessed by Ivan's absence than by the man himself." But then a bizarre incident brings Ivan back, and a new chain of passion and leavetaking inevitably spins itself out. Kinau's life is shaped by the stories and feral energy of her mother (a woman of many husbands) and by the always hovering and jealous presence of the gods. Revenge for a boy's accidental death calls for a bounty on sharks and results in a fishing frenzy. Tidal waves have wreaked havoc, and will again. A volcano carries its own portentous message. And finally, there is Hawaii itself, source of loss, of risk, and possibly of salvation.