The Girl From Everywhere

Heidi Heilig’s The Girl from Everywhere (2016) is a young adult novel that mixes elements of fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction to tell the story of a sailing ship crew that can travel to anywhere in time, space, or fiction as long as it has a map. Centered on the experiences of the teenage daughter of the captain, the novel follows plot threads about trying to get back to her mother, trying to resolve a romantic triangle, and trying to salvage her fraying relationship with her distant father. Readers praise the fact that most of the novel takes place in nineteenth-century Hawaii, in a deeply researched and rich setting.

Nix was born in Honolulu in 1868 – but her mother Lin died giving birth to her (Nix is half Chinese half Caucasian). For the last sixteen years, she has spent her life aboard The Temptation, a pirate ship captained by her father, Slade. However, The Temptation is no ordinary ship. Because of Captain Slade’s knowledge of the magical art of Navigation, he can go to any place, any time, just as long as he has a hand-drawn map of where he intends to go. In her life, Nix has been to mythic Scandinavia, a land from the tales of One Thousand and One Nights, modern-day New York City, and many more places both real and imagined. All of these voyages have only ever had one goal: Captain Slade wants to get back to Honolulu in 1868 in order to save Nix’s mother – and possibly cause Nix to no longer exist in the process.

There are some rules to the time and space traveling. Each map can only be used for Navigation once – and one can never Navigate to a place and time where one has already existed. Although Nix really wants to learn how to Navigate, Slade refuses to teach her all of his secrets – she knows just enough to help him, but not enough to try it on her own. Nix goes along with her father’s obsession. Partly because he is distant and borderline mean, partly because she doesn’t think he will ever actually succeed in finding the right map, and partly because she is worried about his growing opium addiction. In the process, Nix has grown close to the ship’s crew – particularly the witty, flirtatious, free-spirited thief Kashmir.



One day in 2016 New York City, Slade seemingly gets his hands on the right map – but this one gets them to Honolulu in 1884, years too late. Slade is devastated, but Nix is happy to explore Oahu, meeting Joss, a mysterious, blind older woman in a Chinatown shop, and also Blake, a young, attractive white American who gives her a tour.

In the meantime, Slade is approached by members of the Hawaiian League – a real-life group of American businessmen who would go on to orchestrate the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and its annexation by the U.S. They seem to know all about Slade’s abilities, offering him a map of 1868 Honolulu in exchange for his help in bankrupting the Hawaiian monarchy by robbing the royal treasury. Slade agrees to consider it, and they set up a meeting with Mr. Hart, Blake’s father, a month later.

Kashmir and Nix decide to solve the situation by simply stealing the map. They attend the League’s ball, but their plan falls apart when Nix overhears Kashmir’s ruse of flirting with Mrs. Hart and gets jealous. At the same ball, Slade tries to convince Mr. Hart to simply join them on The Temptation with the map, escaping the whole situation. Mr. Hart seems convinced, but when Blake interrupts Nix and Kashmir, the situation deteriorates, and Mr. Hart backs out of the escape plan. Slade is furious at his daughter’s shenanigans.



Nix uses a mythical artifact the crew had earlier retrieved to restore Joss’s sight. Joss then reveals that she also knows how to Navigate – and is able to predict the future. Knowing that she would eventually die in the Great Honolulu Fire of 1886, she used a map to go back to 1841. She explains that because Nix was a baby in 1868 Honolulu, Slade can’t return to that time in Hawaii with Nix aboard the ship.

Instead, to satisfy the Hawaiian League, Slade takes the ship to China in the second century BC to retrieve a valuable artifact and some terracotta warriors from Emperor Qin’s tomb. Slade finally teaches Nix to Navigate – and since she has by now figured out that Joss is Lin’s mother and thus her grandmother, Nix leaves behind a map for Joss.

When they return to Hawaii, Blake discovers his father’s plot to steal the money and is furious. He loves Oahu and is horrified by the idea of white people overthrowing the native government. In desperation, Mr. Hart threatens Slade and Kashmir with his gun, but in the ensuing tussle ends up shooting Blake. Revealing that Blake is actually the son of his brother, Mr. Hart tries to take Nix hostage to get her to Navigate The Temptation.



Just then, however, Nix hears the ghostly attack sounds of the Night Marchers – deadly ancestor protector warriors from Hawaiian legend. Because of Blake’s love of the island and the accuracy of his maps, they have come to defend the land. They take Mr. Hart away.

Nix takes the wounded Blake to a healing spring that he had shown her earlier, and he emerges uninjured. Slade has the necessary map now, so he could leave his daughter behind and travel to 1868 without her. Nevertheless, in the end, he chooses his love for her over his obsession with saving her mother. Together with Kashmir and Blake, Nix and Slade go aboard and sail off to the next chapter of their adventure.