A WILD AND HEAVENLY PLACE

When, on instinct, Samuel Fiddes performs a heroic act, he sets in motion a passionate and tragic romance that will take him halfway around the world.

Glasgow in the late 1870s is a study in contrasts. There are wealthy families, like the MacIntyres, who employ dozens of servants to see to their comfort, and there are orphans like Samuel and his sister, Alison, who grew up in a Catholic orphanage until the nuns’ abuse got to be too much, and they ran away. When Samuel saves little Geordie MacIntyre from a runaway carriage, he and his sister are invited for dinner at the MacIntyres’ home, where he beholds Hailey, whom he has admired from afar at church. They begin a tentative romance, only to be ripped apart when the MacIntyres lose everything in a bank collapse and decide to emigrate to America—Washington Territory, to be exact—for the available mining work. Terrible journeys ensue, and hardship, and bitterness. Hailey marries a local miner to save her family from ruin just before Samuel arrives to find her, and the novel follows the next several years as they try to deny their passion, as Samuel becomes a successful shipbuilder, and as Hailey carries the burdens of a broken family. While Oliveira may not break genre conventions in any meaningful way, she writes with such conviction and sensory detail that one cannot help but be transported into the world of these characters, both primary and secondary, the roughness of the place, and its wild beauty. Overall, this novel is as easy to slip into as a favorite sweater; even the potentially unfamiliar setting is gorgeously rendered and always a surprise. The history of Seattle seems lesser known than many other cities of the era, and it adds a lovely note to the star-crossed love story.

Predictable in almost every way—but, surprisingly, no less enjoyable for it.