Kristiana Kahakauwila’s short story “This is Paradise” presents a first-time visitor to Honolulu, Hawai’i. Over the course of a day, we watch mainland “tourist girl” Susan navigate the Waikīkī neighborhood, renowned for the ocean-facing one-hundred-year-old banyan tree, silky sand beaches, and long rolling surf. Though Susan repeatedly says, “This is paradise,” by her apparent definition, she experiences a series of paradise and counter-paradise moments. Our vantage moves among three groups of local women: Hawaiian surfers; Hawaiian career women, returned from the mainland after completing their educations; and resort hotel housekeepers, who have emigrated from other islands in Oceania. Ostensibly peripheral to the realities of residents, the tourist area of Waikīkī is central to our narrators’ daily lives. As Karin Amimoto Ingersoll’s seascape epistemology reveals, a foundational connection to place informs the local women’s conceptions of paradise and their behaviors, including their interactions with the tourist. The next morning, the body of Susan is found on the beach. In response to her death, on the beach beside the banyan, the women of Oceania stand firm in their care and exercise their guidance.