Percy Kipapa, sumo name Daiki ("Big Happiness") during his career from 1991 to 1997, had an exceptional smile and aloha as large as his oversize body. Though less known than some of his isle-born predecessors — Akebono, Musashimaru and Konishiki — he made it to one of the highest ranks of sumo. But injury and homesickness for his native Waikane forced him to come home.

His attempt at a new life ended when he was stabbed to death in May 2005.

The reader thinks: drama, murder mystery, whodunit.

That’s not it.

Mark Panek, an associate professor of literature at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and author of a highly regarded biography of Akebono (Chad Rowan), has written a different kind of biography. He has written the story of why, as one of his sources says, "This is a wonderful place to live if you don’t know too much."

Panek moved to Hawaii on a lark in his 20s and eventually went to Japan to teach English. He returned to the islands to receive his literary degree and met Kipapa while researching his Akebono book.

His new book is factually dense but reads like a novel — one you can’t put down. (Still, it must be said, the amount of research the author did for this book is more than impressive; the source list is almost a phone book.)

Kipapa is characterized as a man who wanted only to live with his ohana in the shadows of his "Grandpa’s Mountain" in lush Waikane. But he knew too much — about drugs and drug dealing and other shadowy aspects of this almost invisible community in Windward Oahu. Panek posits this is probably why he died.

Much of the book is taken up by the islands’ seamy underside: money and land issues, changing values, government mismanagement, lives ruined by drugs and shame, fame and its aftermath.

And, suddenly, born of all this, Percy was dead. Everyone who knew him speculated about how it was possible that this big, big man, this skilled fighter, could be found dead, defensive wounds all over his hands, in a car on the side of a rural road.

Panek sat at Kipapa’s funeral, asking, "Why?" How could this happen to a man with a world-lighting smile who loved his family, gave his body to sumo and came home to find … nothing — no job worth his time, no land to work.

What he found — again — was crystal methamphetamine, or "ice." He had tried it as a teenager but kicked it in Japan.

The book begins with a starkly written scene that, at first, you think is going to be the murder scene — a literary trick, Panek admits. It’s actually a picture of the harsh hazing of anyone who yearns to enter the sumo ring of dirt and salt.

You learn a lot about sumo from this book. It’s not a pretty picture. You also learn there are more commonalities between Hawaiian and Japanese culture than you might think. Among them are respect and loyalty above all and "gaman" (suck it up, endure), which pairs up with local-boy values such as "no rat" (don’t snitch).

In 2006, Kealii Meheula was convicted of Kipapa’s murder after jurors rejected his claim he had acted in self-defense after Kipapa suddenly "snapped." Both men had used ice.

Panek believes "Big Happiness" was killed by a whole community that responded, too late, with anti-drug neighborhood meetings, picketing and political battles.

This skillfully written book is not about one man or even one loving and close family. It is about all of us who love Hawaii. It is about people who kept their heads in the sand too long.