"With a mix of in-the-moment teenage sass and decades-later perspective, Mango Rash chronicles Nan Pokerwinski's stumbles through two alien landscapes at once: the remote U.S. territory of American Samoa and the tricky terrain of adolescence. As Nan begins to redefine herself and her place in the mid-1960s world, with frangipani-laced air and libidinous music the backdrop to her passage into womanhood, Samoa also experiences growing pains, trying to hold onto ancient customs while undergoing "modernization," American-style. At times, Nan's struggles with identity, independence, and integrity parallel Samoa's, and she takes her cues from the island and its people. Through crises as trivial as a mean girl's put-down and as staggering as the fire and hurricane, a schoolmate's near drowning in a surfing mishap, and the death of Nan's best friend's father, Samoa teaches her about malosi (strength) and survival--lessons that prove invaluable when a startling diagnosis tears her away from the place she has come to love and thrusts her, again, into unknown territory"--