Paradise Park

Synopsis | Praise

Back Story

When I was a young girl, my family attended traditional Shabbat morning services in the sanctuary of Honolulu's Temple Emanuel.  After services, as we were all enjoying a kiddush of wine, challah and herring, the telephone in the hallway between social hall and kitchen began to ring.  The phone rang and rang until my father picked up.  A young woman was on the line, calling from a hotel room in Waikiki.  She had come out to Hawaii with her boyfriend and he had abandoned her there.  Distraught, she'd looked up the number of a Jewish synagogue and called, trying to reach a rabbi or get some kind of help.  My father was not a rabbi, but I remember him trying to calm the despondent caller.  “No, you must use the telephone,” he told her, among other things.  “The telephone is a valuable tool.”  As I recall, he also said, “No, he's never coming back.”  Years later I remembered this moment.  I'd always wondered what happened to that woman in the hotel room in Waikiki.  What did she do next?  Paradise Park is many things: a picaresque novel, a satire, an exploration of religion and identity, a Songs of Experience to bookend Kaaterskill Falls, my Songs of Innocence.  But at a basic level, the novel is an attempt to answer this question.  After her boyfriend left, and the woman was alone in her hotel room near Waikiki Beach—what became of her?  What did she do next?