Hawaii Manuela's small Spanish village buzzed with tales of life in a faraway land free from starvation and angst. In the early months of 1911, with nine children and four Silvan Hernandez (and Gonzales) families, they boarded a British immigrant steamer, the SS Orteric, bound for the Hawaiian Islands. Sugar plantation owners wanted immigrants from Portugal and Spain to work their plantations. They paid for passage, guaranteed work for them, school for their children. In a starving and poor time where the military brandished a strong arm, the families took a gamble along with other families...

One in four Californians is foreign born. The term, Hawaiian Spaniards, alludes to those Spanish immigrants who braved the unknown to leave their homeland for the sugar cane fields of Hawaii and eventually settle in California. SILVAN LEAVES: Out on a Limb is the second in the Spanish Pearls Series, a biographical history following the immigration story of the Silvan family's trek from Spain, their 1911 sailing to Hawaii's sugar plantations and continuing on to California where most of their descendants have remained. This book documents their history and biographical chapters with photos,...