Authors to be featured at Words and Wine event

Cecilia Johansen, Susan Scott and D. S. Thornton will be featured during Kona Stories Book Shop’s Words and Wine event at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Keauhou Shopping Center.

After the death of her husband Charles Kanewa in Los Angeles in 2003, Cecilia Johansen met his cousin a year later at a Hawaii Marines Reunion in Las Vegas. She fell in love with the handsome virile cowboy and after four months, she took a leap of faith and moved to Hawaii to marry Bernard Johansen and live in the lush up-country of Waimea on Hawaii Island. They were only married for five years before his untimely death. Stories from the lives of the two cousins growing up in Kapaahu, Puna, and extensive research have led to her first novel “The Canoe Maker’s Son.”

“The Canoe Maker’s Son” takes readers on an adventure from the tropics of Hawaii to the open sea, to rugged coasts and dark forests, and to the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. It is a story of shanghai, survival, and surprising ancestry.

Johansen is a new writer and has published stories and poetry in West Hawaii Today’s North Hawaii News, Freida Mazazine, and contributed her husbands’ stories to Halia Aloha no Kalapana (Fond Memories of Kalapana), a project sponsored by the Hawaii Council for the Humanities and the Teresa Lee Waipa Trust. Johansen is contemplating writing another novel about the beautiful Hawaiian people and their history. She continues to reside in Waimea

Scott has written a weekly column called “Ocean Watch” since 1987 and is the author of eight books about nature in Hawaii. A former registered nurse, she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Hawaii and is a graduate of the university’s marine option program. As a longtime volunteer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, she has counted albatrosses on Midway Atoll, tagged coconut crabs on Palmyra Atoll and rescued monk seals and sea turtles at French Frigate Shoals Atoll.

In “Call Me Captain,” Scott recounts her venture into the daunting world of offshore sailing, bares her soul regarding her struggles with menopause and marriage, and introduces readers to remarkable Palmyra Atoll. Her memoir is an exciting account of that remarkable journey, merging adventure, biology, history and the complexities of human companionship. The story is for everyone for who has ever faced a major turning point, and wondered about the meaning of life.

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Scott has lived on Oahu with her physician husband, Craig Thomas, since 1983.

A former graphic designer and magazine art director, Thornton lives in the Hilo area. She writes middle-grade fantasy as well as silly sci-fi for young adults and up. She is also an accomplished artist, specializing in island themes.

In “Scrap City,” the reader meets fifth-grader Jerome Barnes. When he begins to explore his local junkyard, he doesn’t expect to find anything interesting. But then he comes upon Arkie. At first Arkie looks like a toy, or a robot. But Arkie isn’t a toy or a robot, he’s a Scrapper — a boy made of old odds and ends come to life. And what’s more, there’s a whole city of Scrappers right underneath the junkyard. Jerome and little Arkie quickly become good friends, and when danger threatens to destroy the underground city and all of its citizens, Jerome knows he must protect his new friends.

Thornton has written for the San Francisco Examiner and the Peninsula Times Tribune in Palo Alto, California. She has produced three novels and one picture book.

Following a more formal book presentation from each author there will be a Q&A session. The event concludes at 8 p.m.

Info: Brenda or Joy, 324-0350.