A book to read: A WILD AND HEAVENLY PLACE
It’s a thrill to read a book set in Seattle. I loved remembering hiking the same trails the main character slogged up in her long skirts. I love that I too have looked out over Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, boated across Lake Washington, and felt the thrill of The Mountain Being Out after a long slew of gray days.
I’m convinced this is why so many books are set in New York City. Historically, that’s where all the agents and publishers live, so they are probably also thrilled when their very own Gramercy Park neighborhood or Pineapple Street is the setting. Then yet another NYC book is published and the rest of us have to deal.1
Anyway.
Beyond the impeccably researched Pacific Northwest vibes, A Wild and Heavenly Place is such a beautiful book.
Set in the late 1800s, the story opens as young lovers in Scotland (the rich girl/poor guy trope is extremely well done) are separated when Hailey’s family loses their fortune and moves to Seattle. Hailey shouts out her destination (“Remember Washington Territory!”) to her beloved Samuel as her family flees Glasgow, but she has only the dimmest of fantasies that the poverty-stricken orphan (with his younger sister in tow) will be able to follow her across the world.
Not a spoiler: He does, of course. The book is a dual POV, so we readers can follow Samuel to Seattle as Hailey lives in clueless despair.
A few months apart, both Hailey and Samuel arrive in Seattle. It’s an ugly, muddy, stinking city (sorry Seattle!), but it’s slightly better than Hailey’s final destination: the coal town of Newcastle up on Cougar Mountain.
Today, Newcastle is a ritzy suburban neighborhood tucked between Cougar Mountain and Lake Washington. In 1879 things were not so nice:
The town wound through a bleak, narrow valley shorn of its trees, stumps pocking the ground…Coal smoke poured from stovepipes. Slag heaps moldered thirty feet high, emitting noxious fumes. Unpainted sheds lean off balance, threatening collapse…Another train had arrived, and the grating thunder of coal tumbling down the long chutes reverberated up the little valley. Coal mining seemed to require an awful lot of shouting. Hailey realized that there would never be a moment of quiet here. They lived in the middle of a factory.
Hailey’s life gets increasingly terrible. Then, in the middle of the book EVERYTHING CHANGES and I can’t tell you about any of it because of spoilers.
I loved the first half of the book, and was OBSESSED with the second half. Isn’t it crazy when something great all of the sudden, somehow, becomes even better? That is this book.
If you also are into maps of early Seattle, check out the Substack. Author David Williams was one of the experts who Robin Oliveira consulted when she was researching the book.
A place to explore: Cougar Mountain
A couple years ago my kids and I went on a fall hike on Cougar Mountain. We did not see any cougars. Also, I somehow took three videos and zero pictures of the hike, so here ya go:
One hundred years after its stint as a mining site, Cougar Mountain became a Regional Wildland Park with lots of hiking trails - just avoid the sink-holes caused by underground coal mining. The Red Town Trail is the most popular, as it travels though the remnants of a coal town like the one where Hailey’s family lived in the novel. The Red Town Trail passes by old coal carts, closed off mine entrances, and lots of historical plaques that I didn’t take pictures of because I didn’t know that I’d be writing about this hike two years later.
A lesson to teach: A Gallery Walk of Coal
Wherever there are a lot of random stories about a historical thing that I want my students to know about, my go-to strategies are Jigsaw Groups and Gallery Walks.
For this gallery walk of coal, I divide my students into pairs and give each pair a document. I double up, so each document will be represented by two pairs. Students then have to annotate the document and make a poster.
Each poster must include:
The document and with their annotations
Sourcing information about the document (Primary or secondary source? Who created it? When and why?)
A visual
A question for other students to answer
Students then circle the class, studying the posters (like they are walking around a gallery…get it?) If your kids won’t disturb other classes you can stick these posters up in the hallway and have students work from there. For each poster they study, students will need to summarize the document, record the citation, and answer the question that is on the poster. Here is a chart that helps then accomplish this. Since there are two posters about each document, students only need to complete summary information/questions for ONE of each of the posters (this allows students to spread out a bit).
Here are the documents about coal. The documents are listed from easiest to read to hardest to read, which gives you a chance to differentiate instruction. For the documents online, I just print out the picture and/or chart along with the first couple of paragraphs about it.
Pictures - just do an image search of “coal pits 1800s” and pick your favorite. I like this one of a coal mine and town and this one of female coal workers.
Polonius the Pit Pony by Richard O'Neill: I tear the page out of the book that explains how the pony used to have to go down into the coal mines
Picture and description of mountaintop removal in Appalachia
US Coal Exports Continue to Rise: Graph from a pro-coal website
An excerpt from your textbook about coal and the Industrial Revolution
Excerpt from A WILD AND HEAVENLY PLACE: The first few pages of Chapter 18 (pages 159 - 163 on the hardcover edition) describes a mine explosion and the horrible aftermath
The Lummi Nation Fends off Big Coal: In 2016, The Lummi Nation stopped a coal terminal from being built, which would have impacted promised fishing rights. Here is a longer article from the NYTimes.
I once decided to boycott books set in New York and I caved after about three weeks. There are just too many good books I didn’t want to miss. I am a horrible boycotter.
I also love book set in NY but since the PNW has been my home for 3 decades, I enjoy learning about this region. I could not have survived in the 1880s here (in a posh NYC townhouse, yes, but not in the middle of a coal factory!) but I'm happy to sit in my home with a view to Mt. Baker and read about those hearty souls who went before us. Thanks for the recommendation!
Love because I have this book on hold at the library and can't wait to read it, AND because I love that trail too. We lived close to there when kid #1 was born and I spent a few of those mindless days of early motherhood walking the trails with her strapped to me. The old mining stuff is so cool! I desperately want to see what the mines look like inside, but that's obviously not an option!