The year is 2011. U.S. Marine Sergeant James Landsfield has just arrived in Hawaii. His new station of O‘ahu is an island with nearly one million others in a cosmopolitan landscape of suburban sprawl and littered with urban high rises.
As a newly arrived tourist eager to seek out the beauty of Hawai‘i, he finds his way to the footsteps of the only royal palace on American soil – ‘Iolani Palace. He climbs the steps to a bygone era as a tropical breeze urges him onward. He enters through the front doors and a wind follows him. He is moved by a monarchy lost. During his tour, he becomes enthralled with a portrait of Princess Kaiulani, heir to the throne, who met her tragic fate at the tender age of 23. Breathtakingly beautiful and bright, the young woman in the portrait stares back at him. Her exotic beauty – a blend of her European and native Hawaiian heritage, speaks of a destiny of two worlds intertwined yet at odds.
While at the palace, James encounters a mysterious man who makes him a proposition to travel back in time to meet 18-year old Kaiulani, the impassioned advocate who had returned to her island home after lobbying for liberation of Hawaii’s people and the extrajudicial overthrow of Hawai'i's Queen. The beguiling figure sends James on a fateful journey back to the year of 1893 as a coup of business interests overthrow the monarchy. The trickster promises that James can meet the fiery Peacock Princess but he must bring the family heirloom "pendant" to 2011. James is transported back 120 years and arrives on the streets of dusty and bustling Honolulu in a world of struggle and strife amongst mounting tensions of a heated social and political landscape.
What unfolds is a captivating story of love and hope and one of strength and sacrifice.
