For the old Hawaiians, love and bones were intimately intertwined. Bones, one's last surviving material expression, possessed mana-one's bones mattered more than life itself. If one were loved, one's bones were lovingly cleaned, polished and hidden. Down through the generations, one's bones would be respected and honored, sometimes, even deified. Love was the surviving spiritual expression of who one was-how much love was there, or wasn't there, when the bones were laid bare, is what ultimately mattered, in the most final sense. On the other hand, if one were unloved, or an enemy got to one's bones, they would ignominiously be whittled into fishhooks to be gnawed on by creatures of the deep or arrowheads with which to shoot despised rats.The respected chronicler of Hawaiian culture, Mary Kawena Pukui, once said that, in Hawaii, unrequited love makes the best stories; hence, most of the old Polynesian legends and myths are tragic in nature. Aptly then, six of the stories in Bones of Love are tragic, though they each express elements of love's sublimity; the seventh, the title story, is the eternal tale, Hawaiian style, of how ultimately, true love triumphs over tragedy.Woven of bones and love, here are seven beautifully provocative, sometimes strangely disturbing, stories of a sadly vanquished culture and how it loved -"The Bird Catcher," "House of Bones," "Warrior Woman," "Broken Vow," "Where Has He Gone?," "Bones of Love," and "Thigh Bone."

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