Patsy's Gingerbread Fantasy

Patsy's Gingerbread Fantasy, set in multicultural Hawaii, includes poems of ohana, resolve, and perseverance, aloha transcending time and place as a family endures and grieves for losses across decades- a father, then a mother. Layers of meaning unfold through carefully depicted images and scenes centered around a mother whose grit and passions are timeless and transformative. The reader is emersed in culture, country, coffee, and kuleana/responsibility, as the reader travels to rural Pahala Town in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Punalüu Beach during a tidal wave, Queen's Medical Center on Oahu, and back to the front pew of a small-town church. Everyday items become symbols of loss and longing- keys, steel toe boots, cookbooks, newspaper, gold jewelry, and always the coffee. Poems crystalize memories coveted across generations.