u/snortgiggles

I found this book at an estate sale, and noticed it was signed. I'm wondering if it's worth finding someone who deals with Polynesian studies to inquire about it. Anyone have thoughts, advice, insight?

With the help of Google, I've got:

The author, ​Willowdean C. Handy, was a prominent American anthropologist and ethnologist. In 1920–1921, she and her husband, Edward Smith Craighill Handy, traveled to the Marquesas Islands as part of a famous scientific expedition for the Bishop Museum of Honolulu. She became an expert on Marquesan art, culture, and tattooing.

The inscription reads: ​"Kaoha [a Marquesan greeting/valediction meaning love or compassion] to Edward and Elizabeth Handy, faithful friends of all Polynesia from Willowdean C. Handy"

​The "twistt" if you will is thatWillowdean and her husband Edward divorced in 1934. Edward later remarried a woman named Elizabeth , and the two of them continued to collaborate on massive anthropological studies of Hawaii and Polynesia.

​This book was published in 1965 (the year Willowdean died.).This inscription shows that despite a divorce three decades prior, Willowdean remained close enough with her ex-husband and his new wife to warmly gift them a signed copy of her final memoir, explicitly honoring their shared, lifelong devotion to Polynesian anthropology.

The name "HANDY" written on the bottom text block edge indicates this copy likely sat on Edward and Elizabeth's personal research bookshelves for decades.