"If only haole men admired statuesque women,'" murmurs zaftig Anne Cartwright, heroine of Island Snatchers, Kay Johnson's tale of mid-19th-century Hawaii. Body image is at the heart of this historical novel (a first from the popular romance writer): it's the key to love, happiness and cross-cultural understanding in a land where food gets massaged down the throats of the most desirable women and bigger is always more beautiful. A missionary's widow, Anne beats the odds to make her own way in Honolulu, ministering to the natives as a nurse and midwife, but it isn't until Dr. Matthew Cabe comes to the island that the voluptuous sensibility of her adoptive South Seas home overcomes the puritanical sexual codes (and corsets) of Hawaii's white community.