HomoSteading at the 19th Parallel

By: David Gilmore

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

A man from Arizona buys a piece of land in the middle of a lava field while vacationing in Hawaii and returns to the island in search of a deeper sense of home and to build his midlife crisis tropical dream house. In this assemblage of journal entries during the trying year of construction, the author tells some of the secrets of rural Hawaii, revealing her dark underbelly. Meet the crazy neighbors in Puna’s “open air asylum,” get lost on a late night lava walk, join a lynch mob against the coqui frogs, and find the true meaning of ‘aloha’ in the jungle. “What do you do when you’ve run away from home again and you still want to keep running? This is a story of a relationship, not with just a house, but with a vision of home. I could have read twice as long a book with as much excitement—it was heartbreaking and hilarious to watch Gilmore’s poignant love affair disintegrate. As a reader, I was rooting for the love affair to last and I was stubbornly optimistic when it didn’t...but finally, he realizes one night, while holding his dog and swinging in the hammock, that he has built a perfect home in paradise—for someone else.” —Gillian Kendall, author of Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet.