The Society of Seven


The Society of Seven: Last of the Great Show Bands
by Frances Kirk

Softcover, 368 pp
Release Date: December 2013
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For five decades—from their early years in Hong Kong as the Fabulous Echoes to standing-room-only performances in clubs and concert halls around the world—the saga of the Society of Seven has been one of the most enduring success stories in show business. After encouragement from friends, the group’s longtime confidante and manager, Frances Kirk, sat down to recount her personal journey with the band, which happens to be deeply enmeshed with the history of the group itself. In her memoir, The Society of Seven: Last of the Great Show Bands, Kirk recounts the wild ride of a revolving cast of world class entertainers, who overcame dramatic turnover and personal tragedy to build a unique legacy in the rough-and-tumble world of showbiz.

A savvy businesswoman born and raised in Hong Kong, Kirk joined the family business, Diamond Music Company, in 1960 when her father fell gravely ill. She went on to establish the company’s recording department and concert promotion arm, building Diamond Music into a major player in the entertainment industry in Hong Kong, Singapore and Southeast Asia. In 1980 Kirk was appointed entertainment director at Outrigger Hotels and Resorts, where her duties included promoting and booking talent at the Outrigger Main Showroom and later the Polynesian Palace.

The Society of Seven is a 362-page softcover book with black-and-white photo insert sections.

This book is a customized version of the Professional Package, with increased print run.

The Society of Seven: Last of the Great Show Bands is available via our online store and at local bookstores, as well as select churches and hospital gift shops.

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A Saint Louis Man

A Saint Louis Man: The Story of Hawai‘i’s Ray Tam by Lance Tominaga

Hardcover w/ dustjacket, 128 pp
Release Date: September 2013
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Attorney Ray Tam always regretted that his paternal grandparents passed away without leaving any record of their long and interesting lives, and thus resolved to leave his own story for his children and grandchildren. Working with biographer Lance Tominaga—author of the Clarence T.C. Ching biography A Prophecy Fulfilled—Tam pays tribute to the life lessons learned at alma mater Saint Louis School with his own book, A Saint Louis Man. Also greatly inspired by his father, who left school after the fourth grade to help support his family (“You will be what I cannot be!” he told Ray), Tam went from country town to big-city courtroom to the People’s Republic of China, in a career that included guiding a Hawai’i law firm employing some of the biggest names in Hawai’i law and politics, raising the bar in personal injury litigation, and establishing the China Program, a celebrated international effort which assists the Chinese in the drafting of their laws and the establishment of the Rule of Law in China.

This type of book can be created with the ‘Ohana Package or Professional Package, customized to have a hardcover with dustjacket.

A Saint Louis Man: The Story of Hawai‘i’s Ray Tam is available via our online store and at local bookstores.

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Judge Arthur S.K. Fong

Judge Arthur S.K. Fong: Living A Life That Matters by Jerry Burris

Hardcover w/ dustjacket, 112 pp
Release Date: July 2014
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Judge Arthur S.K. Fong’s memoir, Judge Arthur S.K. Fong: Living A Life That Matters, takes its title from one of his favorite poems, “A Life That Matters.” Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident. / It’s not a matter of circumstances, but of choice. / Choose to live a life that matters. “There are always periods of high and low moments in life,” Judge Fong observes. “In my professional life, we are proudest when tough problems are solved. I have lived and participated in the most dramatic, exciting time in Hawaiian history. Some of the records of what happened during those years are forever lost. Most of my contemporaries are now long gone, or their memories faded. I wanted my story to be written so my great-grandchildren and the generations to follow would have some insight into my involvement in Hawai‘i’s history.” Fong also credits the “constant, insistent prodding” of his eldest son, Peter, with motivating him to work with veteran biographer Jerry Burris to chronicle his life story.

After earning a law degree and a masters in business administration from the University of Michigan, Fong, the grandson of Chinese immigrants, went on to distinguish himself in the legal profession, imposing strict standards of professionalism upon himself and those around him. As a confidant of such leaders as Governors William F. Quinn, John A. Burns and George R. Ariyoshi, he helped guide the Islands into statehood and through the challenging years that followed.

This type of book can be created with the ‘Ohana Package or Professional Package, customized to have a hardcover with dustjacket.

Judge Arthur S.K. Fong: Living A Life That Matters is available via our online store and at local bookstores.

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Hawai‘i Calling

Ad in Morning Paper. Round Trip, Fourteen Nights—$550

When a March vacation in 1986 offers an escape from one more brutal Minnesota winter, it turns into an unexpected calling. In a leap of faith, Ric d. Stark leaves his mainland home behind and moves to Hawai‘i, changing the course of his life forever.

In intimate and poignant stories of loving friendships, bizarre encounters with Hawaiian spirits, and the challenges of navigating an unfamiliar cultural landscape, Stark invites readers to join him on his journey to make Hawai‘i his “heart home.” Revealing his personal struggles to discover his identity as a gay man and his place in the Islands, Stark observes, “I often feel that I’m the one oddity that doesn’t quite belong. Not just the ‘belonging in Hawaiʻi’—it’s larger than that, and deeper too. A universal, human condition—don’t we all search our entire lives to find some communion with larger humanity? I answered with enthusiasm the deep, undeniable call of my spirit to live in this tropical home. Yet once here, I am forever just one more haole boy from the Midwest mainland.”

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Ric d. Stark is new to a post-retirement career in literary nonfiction. A graduate with a Bachelor of Physical Therapy from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he has worked in Hawai‘i as a home health physical therapist for thirty-four years. He is an award-winning quilter specializing in the Hawaiian quilt technique with accolades from the American Quilter’s Society Annual Quilt Show and the Hawai‘i Quilt Guild. He is the current president of the Hawai‘i Quilt Guild. Stark lives in Ewa Beach, O‘ahu, with his dog, Heno.

Release Date: August 2021
120 pages

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With Honor and Compassion

With Honor and Compassion: The Saint Louis School Class of 1951—A Legacy of Excellence by Raymond J. Tam

Softcover, 128 pp
Release Date: February 2014
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With Honor and Compassion: The Saint Louis School Class of 1951—A Legacy of Excellence is a compilation of speeches and profiles of members of the Saint Louis Class of 1951 written by Raymond J. Tam (’51) to honor the accomplishments of his classmates. This book was produced as a special gift for the members of the class. Tam notes in the introduction: “Over the years, I have been privileged to speak on behalf of our class, the Saint Louis Class of 1951. Many of you may not have been present at some of these functions, so I thought I would share some of these talks with you.”

Tam previously worked with writer Lance Tominaga to issue his own memoir, A Saint Louis Man, also released through Legacy Isle Publishing.

This type of book can be created with the ‘Ohana Package or Professional Package.

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Yes! A Memoir of Modern Hawaii

Yes! A Memoir of Modern Hawaii
Yes! A Memoir of Hawaii by Walter A. Dods Jr., with Gerry Keir and Jerry Burris

Softcover, 256 pp
Release Date: December 2015

An avid philanthropist, Dods is donating all of his income from sales of his memoir to Aloha United Way.

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Politics, business and community interests often collide in modern Hawaii. In a small island state, there is no way to avoid it. One man who stood at the intersection of these three waves throughout his career is banker Walter Dods Jr.

Dods was born in Honolulu just before Pearl Harbor, the first of seven children in a close-knit family that struggled to pay its bills. From those modest beginnings, Dods grew to play a role in the modern history of Hawaii. He helped to sustain a political dynasty through his work for the campaigns of Gov. George Ariyoshi and Sen. Dan Inouye. He built the state’s largest and most successful business, First Hawaiian Bank/BancWest Corporation. His focus on community service and charitable fundraising has helped to support a society too often fractured by the divide between an immigrant, plantation past and the more modern forces of contemporary America.

This memoir describes many of the steps – and occasional missteps – along the way and concludes with Dods’ observations on the nature of power and ways in which Hawaii’s next generation can find success while staying true to “local values.”

This book is a customized version of the Professional Package, with increased print run and endflaps added to the softcover.

Yes! A Memoir of Hawaii is available via our online store and at local bookstores.

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Allegiance

Allegiance by Darien Hsu Gee, IPPY Book Award Bronze Winner

Evidence of my life is everywhere.

What does it mean to be Chinese American? How are we reflected in the people we love, and us in them? What obligation do we have to those who share our blood, and how does a woman claim her life as her own? In vivid and evocative flashes of prose, Darien Hsu Gee dissects her beliefs and navigates the complexity of family dynamics in search of her identity.

“Arresting … this poignant, poetic memoir will draw readers in.” —BookLife (Editor’s Pick)

“Taut and lyrical.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Gee is a marvelously direct writer of powerful autobiographical vignettes, each one telling in its quiet ferocity for personal revelation, each a momentary, lyric ascent above everyday confusion.” —Garrett Hongo, author of Coral Road: Poems

2021 IPPY Award Winner (Bronze, Essays) – Independent Book Publisher Awards

Darien Hsu Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into 11 languages. She won the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award for Other Small Histories and the 2015 Hawai‘i Book Publishers’ Ka Palapala Po‘okela Award of Excellence for Writing the Hawai‘i Memoir. She is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant and a Vermont Studio Center fellowship. Gee holds a B.A. from Rice University and an M.F.A. from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. She lives with her family on the Big Island of Hawai‘i.

Photo Credit: Darrin Gee

Darien Hsu Gee

Release Date: October 2020
114 pages

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Huaka‘i Hele: Long Voyage

Huaka‘i Hele by Sally-Jo Bowman

I didn’t use the name. But I couldn’t forget it.

A Hawaiian girl began without a Hawaiian name, when being Native Hawaiian wasn’t cool. When a high school classmate gave Sally-Jo Bowman a Hawaiian name in 1956, she ignored it because it wasn’t “official” and she focused on becoming a journalist. Yet, over many years, “Keala-o-Ānuenue,” The Path of The Rainbow, crept subliminally into what she chose to write about and how she wrote. Eventually that pathway surfaced and became front and center in her heart and mind.  

Sally-Jo Keala-o-Ānuenue Bowman

Sally-Jo Keala-o-Ānuenue Bowman grew up in Kailua, O‘ahu, born in 1940 to a half-Hawaiian father and a Swedish mother from North Dakota. Her memoir pieces have appeared in various magazines and literary journals, and she is the author of The Heart of Being Hawaiian and co-author of No Footprints in The Sand.

Photo credit: Myrna Wheeler

Release Date: September 2020
112 pages

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The Kindergarten Dropout of Kapoho

The Kindergarten Dropout of Kapoho by Frances Kakugawa

The road out of Kapoho was long and seemingly endless.

Who knew a “kindergarten dropout” could make it so far? Restless and headstrong, Frances Kakugawa was raised amid the anti-Japanese fervor of wartime Hawai‘i. Back then, she longed to leave her hardscrabble hometown in the shadow of Kīlauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, with its kerosene lamps and outhouses stocked with Sears catalogs for toilet paper. As a child, Kakugawa pretended she was the long-lost daughter of the emperor who would reclaim her and restore her to her royal life—perhaps tomorrow, or maybe the next day. The imperial carriage never arrived, but Kakugawa did follow the path of her dreams, building a career as a teacher, an acclaimed poet and a nationally recognized authority on family caregiving and education.  

Frances Kakugawa

Born and raised in the village of Kapoho on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, Frances H. Kakugawa is an internationally published author of sixteen books, who has received numerous awards from literary and family caregiving organizations—among them, the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association, Northern California Publishers & Authors, Mom’s Choice Awards, Sunrise Ministry Foundation, California Writers Club and Hawai‘i Pacific Gerontological Society. She has also been recognized by the Hawai‘i Japanese Women’s Society Foundation as one of the Outstanding Women of the 20th Century in Hawai‘i. Frances has taught at schools in Michigan, Micronesia and Hawai‘i, where she was a curriculum writer, teacher trainer and lecturer in the College of Education at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is a columnist for the Hawai‘i Herald—the “Dear Frances” advice column for caregivers—and gives lectures, workshops and readings to schools and community groups nationwide on the subjects of caregiving, teaching, writing and poetry. She also facilitates a writing support group for caregivers in Sacramento, California, where she lives.

Photo Credit: Jason Kimura

Release Date: September 2020
122 pages

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