1950s
A01=Juanita Sheridan
anthropology
Asian-American
Author_Juanita Sheridan
Category=FF
Category=FFS
drowned
drowning
eq_bestseller
eq_crime
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
father
film
Hawaii
Honolulu
hula
Janice Cameron
Lily Wu
movie
murder mystery
novelist
post-war
real estate
scholar
suspense
Product details
- ISBN 9781631943362
- Dimensions: 139 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 11 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Felony & Mayhem
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Hawaii just after the war is an unspoiled paradise. Any mystery fan can tell you that won’t last.
Aloha! It's 1950, and the SS Lurline is steaming into Honolulu harbor. On board are Janice Cameron, coming to celebrate the novel she's written about Hawaii; a boatload of tourists eager to get their leis on; and a few people who are not what they seem. Watching them all—and missing nothing—is the beautiful and enigmatic Lily Wu. Like Janice, she's coming home: While they may have met in New York, they're both Hawaii girls of long standing. But while Janice may be surprised by the changes that the tourists (and their money) have brought to her beloved islands, very little surprises Lily.
Which is lucky for Janice, as those surprises get ugly very fast.
Juanita Sheridan (nee Light), born in Oklahoma in 1906, spent her childhood in boarding schools and traversing the American West unsupervised. By her early 20s, broke and with a baby, she landed in LA and hustled hard writing (and selling!) screenplays. When little Ross was adopted by his grandmother, Sheridan lit out for Hawai'i to write in earnest. Escaping an unsuccessful marriage, she left Hawai'i in 1941. After stays in New York and California, she eventually remarried and landed in Mexico, working as a translator and knocking back a regular cocktail of booze and pills. In 1974 her son received a postcard informing him of her death. Incurably restless and likely a terrible mother, Juanita Sheridan made a vital contribution to the mystery genre: her protagonist Lily Wu was the first Asian woman to anchor a series. At a time when Asian characters were often clumsy caricatures, Sheridan depicted Lily and her multiethnic supporting players as nuanced, fully realized human beings.
