"THE LOVE REMAINS" by Katherine Kama'ema'e Smith; iUniverse, paper, $17.95

Katherine Smith is an unlikely person to have written a historical romance about a real-life Hawaiian chiefess. She is a transplant who divides her time between Maui and South Bend, Ind. She spent her career as a marketing manager in the biotech industry and has no training in fiction writing.

Since she took up part-time residence in Kapalua 13 years ago, however, Smith has immersed herself in Hawaiian culture, including five years studying the Hawaiian language. (Her Hawaiian middle name, adopted when she was studying the language, is a transliteration of the Hebrew meaning of her name, pure or chaste.) She decided that if she was going to understand the culture, she needed to read original sources — from chants and newspapers to historian Abraham Fornander's works — in Hawaiian. She is an avid and meticulous researcher.

As often happens with historical novels, a particular character prompted Smith to write the book. The character who sent out a kahea — a call — to Smith over the divide of nearly 200 years is Sarah Kani'aulono Davis, the last chiefess of the ahupua'a of Honokahua on Maui's north shore.

The hapa-haole chiefess is little known, despite connections to King Kamehameha's triumvirate of British advisers: Isaac Davis, her father; John Young, who helped raise her; and Alexander Adams, her husband.

The more Smith learned, the more the author wanted to tell the story of a Hawaiian community at the turning point from traditional to modern times, and the life of Sarah "Kale" Davis became the avenue of such an imagining.

Smith emphasizes that the book is fiction. Kale's life is almost a complete mystery; there is not even an accurate map of Honokahua Valley from this period. The author allowed nearly four years of research on Hawaiian matters in general, and Kale and Honokahua in particular, to ripen in her mind until a village, characters and relationships, and a plot line emerged.

The best historical fiction is a kind of well-informed time travel, and this book is that. Especially for anyone who has spent time in Kapalua, or who is interested in the workings of an ahupua'a, the traditional Hawaiian shore-to-mountain land division, "The Love Remains" is a delightful, informative escape.

Smith handles language in an interesting way, employing a form of redundancy that might annoy Hawaiian speakers but will be appreciated by those who cannot 'olelo Hawai'i. Every Hawaiian word or sentence is immediately followed by the English translation, without interruptive punctuation such as parentheses or quotation marks: "The 'auinala afternoon work began." "E ho'omau 'oe ma'ane'i, wait here." Also, all poetry, mele or chants she quotes are from real sources, and the idiom and metaphor has been checked with older, native speakers, who made changes to place the language in its proper period. "I believe the culture is contained in the language; where there is richness of expression, it tells you what was important to them," said Smith.

The first-time novelist's lack of writing experience shows in such sophomore errors as awkward grammatical structure, sentences overloaded with facts and forced exposition — conversations in which people tell each other things they would already know. However, I've read much worse in books from national publishing houses, and the setting and story make it easy to skip lightly over writing that might otherwise trip you up.

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.