A gutsy and revelatory memoir of a young woman’s solo 700-mile journey into Finland’s arctic wilderness and her quest to uncover a hero of the past.

In 2013, Jenny O’Connell met a legendary woman who would change the course of her life. Petronella van der Moer came to Finland as a penniless aspiring writer in the summer of 1949. After skipping out on her hotel bills in Helsinki and fleeing to Lapland’s goldfields, the Dutch woman was deported at the center of a scandal, eventually becoming a folk hero in Finland’s far north. When fate brought Jenny and Petronella together in the final months of Petronella’s life, Jenny held her breath as the dying legend whispered four captivating words: “I walked to Lapland.” 

Enthralled by Petronella’s adventure in Finland and the mysterious web of unverified stories she left behind, Jenny leaves her job as an outdoor educator in San Francisco and sets out with a big red backpack to retrace Petronella’s route from Helsinki to the dramatic, rock-studded fields of Lapland’s Lemmenjoki National Park. As she walks and hitchhikes from the city suburbs and wide-open lakes of southern Finland to the rugged and unfamiliar terrain above the Arctic Circle, she confronts her own mortality as she encounters violent storms, illness, and the shocking tenderness of strangers, lives with an eccentric group of gold prospectors, and begins to reclaim the wildness and trust in herself she lost as a young girl.

Set against a harsh and stunning backdrop of wild rivers, rolling mountains, and the midnight sun, Wildheart provides sharp inquiry into what it is to be a woman making her way in the male-dominated world of outdoor adventure, interrogates the inherited fears that keep us small, and examines the critical connection between wild places and our most authentic selves. A moving account of self-discovery and transformation, this book explores our lost connection to wildness and the rich life that awaits us when we take it back.

“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