^{What does it mean to stay wild in a culture that would have us forget that’s what we are?}

WILDHEART, Jenny’s debut adventure memoir (forthcoming from DK Books at Penguin Random House in June 2027), tells the true story of her solo 800-mile journey into the Arctic wilderness of Finnish Lapland following the footsteps of the legendary Petronella van der Moer. Weaving adventure writing, memoir, and cultural and environmental journalism into a page-turning journey, the book explores the connection between wild places and our wild selves, provides sharp inquiry into what it is to be a woman making her way in the world of outdoor adventure, and beckons toward a deeper and wilder life.

When Jenny met 89-year-old Petronella in 2013, Petronella changed the course of her life with four whispered words: “I walked to Lapland.” 

In 1949, the adventurous Dutch woman had followed her dream of being a writer to postwar Helsinki, where she interviewed prominent members of Finnish society until she ran out of money, ditched her hotel bills, and fled north to Lapland to escape arrest. There, she hiked 116 kilometers into the Lemmenjoki gold fields, where she joined the gold rush and lived in wilderness with a reclusive, ragtag group of gold prospectors until the secret police arrested her three months later. She was deported from Finland and mysteriously disappeared, leaving a legend growing in her wake. Over time, Petronella became a Lappish folk hero: the subject of books and a musical; the name of a street, a restaurant, a song. Two hills in Lemmenjoki are named after her breasts. More than 70 years later, she continues to be a figure of great mystery and renown. 

Captivated by Petronella’s story, in 2014 Jenny flew to Finland to follow her footsteps across the Arctic Circle.

From the long, flat southern highway to the dramatic, rock-studded fjelds of Lemmenjoki National Park, WILDHEART reclaims a lost connection to wildness and intuition, reimagines our relationship to risk and intuition, and interrogates the inherited fears that keep us playing small. Jenny is guided on her quest by the modern-day Lemmenjoki gold prospectors—an odd and colorful cast of characters who have rich secrets to tell about slowness and depth, living close to wilderness, and the enduring power of story. An experience of deep joy and humanity, the book offers an immersive journey through the wild rivers, prancing reindeer, northern lights, and lichen-crusted fjelds of Arctic Lapland—a cinematic landscape, threatened by climate change, that is as harsh as it is stunning. 

There are ways the world calls us back to ourselves. WILDHEART reminds us of the richness that awaits us when we’re brave enough to listen.

“A big-hearted journey that tells us rich secrets about what it means to be alive and searching.”

^{_{—Susan Conley, author of Landslide and The Foremost Good Fortune}}

“O’Connell expertly guides us through stunning views of one of the rarest landscapes on earth and introduces us to the gracious and gentle people she encounters who become helpers on her quest. This book reminds us on every page that to drift from your appointed path in life does not mean that you are lost.” 

—Debra Marquart, author of The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere