Martha Horiuchi

Yokwe Bartowe is the story of a beautiful young island girl named Lijiamao who is kidnapped by an evil demon bird. The ancient legend of the 'kwolej' bird dictates that its main mission in life is to create sorrow and misfortune in the world. Bartowe is Lijiamao's 20-year-old brother and he was supposed to be watching his sister on the day she mysteriously vanished while swimming in the lagoon. He is blamed for her disappearance by his mother. Even though most people believe that Lijiamao has drowned, the fact that no one ever found her body in extremely shallow water has everyone puzzled. Only Lijiamao's best friend Tili refuses to believe she is dead, much to the dismay of her principal, her teacher and her classmates.

Laninbwil's Gift is the story of Jacob, an old island man with a complicated secret. When Jacob was a teenager, a noniep, a Marshallese fairy known for helping troubled souls, transformed him from a simpleton into a normal young man. This favor, however, came with a cost: The noniep made Jacob promise that one day he must bestow this new-found intelligence upon another deserving person. After a lifetime of pondering this otherworldly commitment to the noniep, Jacob discovers Laninbwil, a homeless young man. Just when Jacob begins to get close to the troubled youth, Laninbwil unwittingly gets caught up in a war of mystical power between an evil Mejenkwar, a demon that possesses pregnant women, and her archenemy, the gifted, shamanic old woman, Lijimu.