The author Kirby Wright gets a 'Thumbs Up' just for capturing the local dialect. I admire this writer because he's able to cover a lot of ground in just over 200 pages—14 years in the life of Jeff Gill, the underdog narrator. I find the writing memoir-like and at other times more like a novel, so I suppose he's between the 2 genres. The voice is poetic at times. You experience the ups and downs of an underdog boy who has sibling rivalry issues with his older brother and a BIG problem with the school bully. The book culminates with a fight on the golf course, witnessed by Arnold Palmer! There's also some interesting stuff about the tricky matter of a white boy trying to date a Korean girl. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to see what Hawaii was like during the 1960s and 70s.