The picturesque Hawaiian islands have long been a favorite vacation destination for Americans but few visitors know about their tumultuous past - including the sordid overthrow of the ruling monarchs by mercenaries in the early 20th Century. Gaellen Quinn, author of the new novel, The Last Aloha, takes us back to those fateful times.

Imagine a 19^th century period film like those produced by Miramax or Merchant Ivory. But instead of being set in royal England or Europe, picture a kingdom with an elegant palace surrounded by banyan trees, stately homes on palm-lined drives cooled by the ginger-scented trade winds. The cast, in Victorian dress, have a variety of tinted faces - Polynesian, Asian, European and American.

In the nearby village, gabled New England style houses with clapboard fronts sit side by side with tidy thatched homes, their gardens filled with a profusion of bright flowering trees and shrubs. Native women wear loose Mother Hubbard gowns in a blare of scarlet, blue, green and yellow. Native men sport white trousers and bright shirts and all wear flowers hung about their necks or wrapped around the brims of their straw hats.

Boys with ukuleles and guitars sit on the street corners strumming and harmonizing, not for any coins, just for the joy of it. Flower sellers offer their blooms. Riders in long, divided skirts canter by, their mounts festooned with garlands. Residents of all colors and social levels freely intermingle along the avenues, exchanging gestures of friendly greeting, and in the afternoon, they promenade past the city hotel where the Royal Band plays their latest compositions.

In the late-19^th century, Hawaii was just such a kingdom, until descendents of American missionaries overthrew the monarchy in 1893.