The Girl from Everywhere is about TIME TRAVELING PIRATES. Just so you know. At sixteen, Nix has sailed everywhere from the lands of the Arabian Nights to present-day New York to eighteenth-century Calcutta — if her crew can find a map of a place, she and her father can sail them there. But all her father truly wants is to find a map of Hawaii in the year that Nix was born, so that he can prevent her mother from dying in childbirth.

As long ago as Nix can remember, her father has been searching for a map of Hawaii that will let him save her mother. She herself has mixed feelings about it, since it will maybe result in her never having been born — a possibility that her father seems never to have considered. Nor does Nix want to bring it up to him. They don’t have that kind of relationship.

The Girl from Everywhere is Heidi Heilig’s first novel, and I’m excited for whatever she’s going to do next. She evokes the last days of independent Hawai’i in a way that’s utterly lovely and, as I said to GREAT MOCKERY on the podcast, made me want to go to Hawai’i for the first time. Nix’s difficult relationship with her father is the emotional heart of this book, and I love that Slate, whom Heilig has said is bipolar, is neither vilified for his illness nor excused for the ways in which he fails as a parent.

For those of you who always ask when I review YA: Yes, there’s a romance, a small one, very respectful and sweet. Some opium, and lots of maps.

Thanks to Amanda of Gun in Act One for the recommendation!

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