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Jill Engledow documented Maui life for more than four decades

Former Maui News reporter Jill Engledow has become one of Maui's foremost historians. Documenting island life for more than four decades, she has authored several books on Maui's history and written historical novels that vividly portray the lives of women who lived on the island in earlier eras.

Her range of nonfiction books include "The Story of Lahaina," "Haleakalā: A History of the Maui Mountain," "Exploring Historic Upcountry," "Sugar Cane Days: Remembering Maui's Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company," and "Maui 101: Your Guide to Island Life."

After spending time on Oahu and Hawaii Island, Engledow arrived on Maui in 1968 at age 22, when the population was around 43,000.

"It was very, very rural," she recalled. "There was no Wailea, and Lahaina was this sleepy little town."

Living on Maui for 53 years and working 17 years with The Maui News, Engledow grew up with "a father who was a newspaperman, and my grandfather ran small newspapers in East Texas. So I had printer's ink in my blood, as they say."

Starting with the alternative weekly The Maui Sun, she joined The Maui News in 1980, where she first spent a year doing the Lahaina beat.

"I had a gossip column that I had to come up with every week," she said. "What we think of as Lahaina with all the tourists, that was just beginning to happen. There was this family life and community life that had been going on for generations. They had their own world, and it had nothing to do with Front Street, except they might work there sometimes."

With a dream to write books, she took a year's sabbatical to study at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville because they had a strong creative writing program and Engledow wanted to learn more about how to write fiction.

"I wanted to write a book about those early years of living on Maui in the late '60s and early '70s, when there were all these mainland, haole, hippie people coming to the island," she said.

She eventually published her first fiction book, "The Island Decides," with a title based on how "people used to say the island decides whether you get to stay here."

From there she delved into historical nonfiction. "That's really where I was successful," said Engledow, who now lives in Oregon.

The stepping stone was a freelance assignment from The Maui News, after she quit her full-time job, to explore "the history of the 20th century on Maui as seen through the pages of The Maui News."

Publishing two full pages every other week for a year, "I spent hours and hours looking at microfilm, and then writing these articles and finding pictures to go with them. So that really launched my non-fiction, historical writing career. It made me an expert in 20th-century Maui history."

Among the history books, she spent years researching "Haleakalā: A History of the Maui Mountain," pouring through Haleakalā National Park files and picture collections, interviewing folks and reading historical accounts of crater trips.

Winner of an Independent Publisher Regional Book Award, and first published in 2012, it chronicles the rich geological, cultural and human history of Maui's highest peak, and includes stories and photographs of the Civilian Conservation Corps who built the historic trails and buildings on the mountain during the 1930s.

"The Haleakalā book was my big one, with 12 years of research and writing," she said. Self-publishing her books, she has decided not to reprint it. "It's a big investment, because I was printing in China, and then along came the tariffs. Then I moved to Singapore, and now it's at the point where it doesn't justify reprinting."

"The Story of Lahaina" is her most successful book, with five printings so far. "People really like that Lahaina book," she noted.

Following the 2023 wildfire, she added a new chapter, focusing on the community's resilience and rebuilding efforts. "After the fire, I didn't realize that there was going to be this demand," she said. "It really got a second life because of the fire. Everybody was so heartbroken. I was just immersed in it, and then it so happened I was on Maui for several weeks house-sitting, and I always had a stack of newspapers that I could go through."

Loving exploring our history, Engledow is compiling a new book that she feels will appeal to both residents and visitors on a subject she doesn't want to reveal yet.

"I started it before the pandemic," she explained. "It's half-finished. I keep thinking, 'I really should finish it.'"

Engledow's books are available on Amazon and at jillengledow.com.