For Jane Marshall Goodsill, Voices of Hawaiʻi began as a labor of love. A kamaʻāina (Hawaiʻi-born) accomplished in the art of oral history, she began interviewing Island residents. Avocation soon became vocation. As Goodsill’s joy in recording these life stories grew, so too did her pool of subjects: business executives, war veterans and POWs, retired plantation managers, Island entertainers, conservationists, retailers, ranchers, activists, judges, journalists and so many others. Taken together, their oral histories told a fascinating, behind-the-scenes tale of Hawaiʻi’s journey from the World War II era into the 21st century.

These were people who had in some way, large or small, impacted Hawaiʻi’s destiny, and Goodsill soon realized that the treasury of anecdotal history she had assembled was too rich to keep to herself. Her voluminous interview transcripts were too weighty for a single volume and better suited for historical archives. But the best of these candid interviews—compelling tales of deals made and glass ceilings shattered, of ancient ways revived and legacy lands preserved—were gathered together under the themes of Island life: history, ethnicity, land use, art and music, philanthropy, development and the spirit of aloha. This is Voices of Hawaiʻi, Jane Goodsill’s unique anthology of oral history, a rare collective view of a society in transition.