A Wild and Heavenly Place by Robin Oliveira

A WILD AND HEAVENLY PLACE by Robin Oliveira (My Name is Mary Sutter) is an historical fiction novel which spans the late 1870s to the early 1880s and begins in Scotland, but ends up on the West coast of America near Seattle. The main characters are a young, very privileged woman, Hailey MacIntyre, and a destitute teenage orphan, Samuel Fiddes. They meet and are attracted to each other, but circumstances separate them for years, as told in chapters that alternate between the two. This is a tale of broken hearts (due to poor business practices and to the thwarted romance which is a main focus) and the hardships associated with poverty. Oliveira readily conveys class differences in Scotland as well as the dirt and clamor of Seattle, essentially a frontier town in that era. Although the characters and their choices seem unrealistic at times, this story is uplifting in that it shows how hard work (Samuel wants to build ships despite no formal training; Hailey struggles to support her younger brother) plus the courage to pursue a dream and the kindness of others often combine to a positive end. Overall, this novel offers an escape to a different time and place, with a fairly predictable plot. Oliveira purposefully acknowledges the many people – librarians included – who assisted in her extensive research. And she writes, “A WILD AND HEAVENLY PLACE is less a summary of historical events than it is a chronicling of human desire - the impossible, the terrible, and the beautiful - in a time before Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks, when coal, timber, and shipbuilding ruled a rollicking raucous town of immigrants on the make, hungry for profit, but mostly hungry for home.”