“I’m too broken to be their hero, too tired to fight their battles.

I just want to live my life.”

COLORS is a raw, emotional tour de force exploration of race relations, gender empowerment, and cultural decline in a near-future Hawai‘i as Pualani Kahahawai struggles against a century of fraught history, dark family secrets, and her own conflicted obligations in order to liberate her own destiny.

For half her life, Pua’s family was houseless and living on a beach in the rural town of Wai‘anae, coping with the economic hardships and cultural oppression of a place most consider paradise. After suffering under her father’s iron rule and his blind lionization of her brother Kalani, Pua focuses her life on escaping the bonds of family and society’s expectations of a “woman of color.”

When racism and sexism throw her professional life in turmoil at the very moment a medical crisis threatens to anchor Pua to her ‘ohana forever, she calls on the memory of the one true love she’s kept hidden from her family for inspiration.

Set amid the simmering tensions of Hawai‘i, J.M. Ferreira’s stunning debut novel peels back the layers of artifice on an island paradise stolen from its people, with an unforgettable portrait of a woman summoning the strength to paint the world in the colors she chooses.

BUY THE BOOK AT AMAZON