The respected chronicler of Hawaiian culture, Mary Kawena Pukui, once said that, in Hawaii, unrequited love makes the best stories; hence, most of the old Polynesian legends and myths are tragic in nature. Aptly then, seven of the stories in Bones of Love are tragic, though they each express elements of love's sublimity; the eighth, "Bones of Love," is the eternal tale, Hawaiian style, of how ultimately, true love triumphs over tragedy. For the old Hawaiians, love and bones were intimately intertwined, and so these stories too, are woven of the two themes, love and bones.