I went to Hawaii about 9 1/2 years ago. Loved it! I was there for a week that was capped off by the wedding of a co-worker. He was from Cleveland originally but living in Columbus, OH for work. He was marrying the love of his life, a woman he met through an online dating site, who happened to be a native Hawaiian. They still live and work here in the Columbus area but that’s just until they can make the dream they’ve had since the day they got engaged a reality: to move “home”. They’ve been building equity in their home in a great neighborhood here (economic downturn not withstanding) and saving money to build their dream on the Big Island near her family.
It was them and their grand plan that came to my mind the day I ran across David Gilmore’s Kindle book, HomoSteading at the 19th Parallel
David Gilmore is the gay former host of OutRight radio. He is now a blogger and photographer living in Tucson, Arizona. In between the periods he has spent living in Arizona, he through caution – among other things – to the wind and, after a visit to Hawaii, decided to buy land and build his dream home there. This incredibly funny book is more or less his journal of the time during the construction and immediately afterward.
Here’s the Amazon review/synopsis of the book:
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
As another reviewer had to say about this book; you’ll love it and totally get it if you’ve ever built a home, you’ll love it more if you’ve ever moved far away to build a home and you will absolutely adore this book if you’re a gay man who has built a home. I agree with all but the third part of that, not being a gay man myself, but – being a member of the LGBT community – I can relate and see where David is coming from!
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