The Lion in the Lei Shop, Kaye Starbird
The Lion in the Lei Shop, Kaye Starbird
List: $35.99 | Sale: $25.20
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The Lion in the Lei Shop

Author: Kaye Starbird

Narrator: Tanya Eby, Kate Rudd, Nancy Pearl

Unabridged: 7 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 06/04/2013


Synopsis

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.

About Kaye Starbird

Kaye Starbird was born into a distinguished Army family in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Her poetry and prose have been published in a variety of magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The American Mercury, and Good Housekeeping. She is the author of four volumes of poetry for children, as well as the novel Watch Out for Mules.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Laura

Kay Starbird's novel is one of a selection of out-of-print novels selected for reprinting by NPR's Nancy Pearl. I reviewed an advance copy for Bookbrowse First Impressions. What an excellent selection! The story begins with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. April Langsmith and her 5-year-old daughter Mart......more

Goodreads review by Lillian

“It was December seventh, nineteen forty-one. No, that’s history, not the beginning of a story. In the story, it was a rainy Sunday, and when I woke, the mynah birds were quarreling in the avocado trees on the lawn, and the rain was splashing and dripping from the great red poinsettia blooms outside......more


Quotes

The Lion in the Lei Shop is a rediscovered treasure of a book that I cannot recommend highly enough. Written with insight, restraint, and flashes of humor, the story of April and Marty is the story of mothers and daughters, friendship, war, love, loss, the reliability of memory and the triumph of the human spirit. I could not put it down.” —Helen Bryan, bestselling author of War Brides