There's a scene about a third of the way into Kiana Davenport's new novel House of Many Gods in which a hundred Native Hawaiian anti-war activists try to protest U.S. military bombings and maneuvers on Oahu's Wai'anae coast. Led by a partially crippled Vietnam vet named Lopaka, the demonstrators attempt to unfurl huge banners saying "NO MORE MILITARY BOMBING" and "GET OFF OUR SACRED LANDS" while bombs explode in the nearby Makua Valley. The cops who start cracking their heads are Hawaiian, too.

"You're a brother," the main character Ana asks one of the indifferent cops. "How can you do this?"

This Machiavellian pitting of Hawaiian against Hawaiian while American troops practice invasion tactics in the background is a brutal indictment of U.S. rule over Hawai'i—which has always been pretty much been low-key violent from the 1893 overthrow to the present. That the scene takes place in a lush work of romantic fiction is stunning. Complex and unforgiving, tragic and yet still hopeful, House of Many Gods is also one of the sharpest and most articulate arguments yet made against the U.S. military's running roughshod over Hawai'i.