Hawaii by James Michener Hawaii, by James A. Michener, is a novel which covers, on both a fictional and a non-fictional level, the total history of Hawaii from its beginning until approximately 1954. The work traces Hawaiian history from the geological creation of the islands ("From the Boundless Deeps) to the arrival of its first inhabitants, ("From the Sun-Swept Lagoon"), then to the settlement of the islands by the American missionaries, ("From the Farm of Bitterness"). In the novel, as the island's agricultural treasures in pineapple and sugar cane were discovered, the Chinese were brought as plant