Wild Geese

Wild Geese is a 2010 young adult novel by Irish-Canadian author, Caroline Pignat. Set in the year 1847, the novel follows Kit Byrne as she makes the harrowing journey from famine-struck Ireland to the Canadian colonies. Determined to reunite the surviving members of her family, Kit is prepared to risk everything, including the companionship of her close friend—and perhaps more—Mick O’Toole. Wild Geese is the sequel to Pignat’s 2009 YA novel Greener Grass, which won the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature. Greener Grass followed the Byrnes’ efforts to emigrate from Ireland under the pressures of eviction and famine. The sequel’s title refers to the nickname given to Irish men who emigrated to fight for foreign armies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the “wild geese.”

Due to events at the denouement of Greener Grass, Kit—who narrates the story— begins the novel a wanted criminal, chased by the law but also by the Lynch brothers, who want vengeance against Kit and are looking for her to bring her to justice.

With her friend Mick, Kit boards a ship—the Erin—bound for Quebec, where Kit’s mother and her siblings, Annie and Billy, have already gone. Because she is on the run, Kit disguises herself as a boy, claiming to be Mick’s brother “Kenny.” Conditions on the ship are dire: half-starved families are packed into tiny berths. The ship’s rations are barely sufficient. Mick and Kit befriend another family fleeing the Famine, and together they complain about the conditions. With their new friends, things are almost bearable. Exploring the ship, Mick and Kit discover a stowaway and get themselves into trouble with an unpleasant sailor, Coyle, who threatens to kill the two friends.



In the storeroom of the ship, Mick and Kit manage to get some time alone. Mick tells Kit he loves her. She is confused and flustered: her every thought is of her family, and she is focused on reuniting them.

“The fever” breaks out onboard. Passengers are beginning to die of typhus; in the cramped conditions, the sickness spreads quickly. The dead are dumped at sea.

Due to the outbreak, the ship cannot land in Quebec. Instead, the passengers are quarantined on Grosse Isle offshore of the mainland. Hundreds of people die in quarantine, where the locals shun the new arrivals. The only kindness comes from nuns, who arrive to do what they can for the afflicted passengers: “Combing and cutting hair, washing bodies, shaving the men. Such simple things, really, but it amazes me how wonderful it feels. To be clean. To be cared for.”



The Lynch brothers arrive, still looking for Kit. Mick and Kit escape from the island and make it ashore. Kit is forced to leave Mick behind in order to look for her family.

She expects to find them all in one place, but instead, she discovers that her mother has died and her siblings have been taken by different families. Kit changes her plans: she is the head of the family now, and she owes it to her dead parents to reunite the children.

Kit tracks down her sister, Annie, but Annie is happy with her new family. Having nothing to offer her, Kit decides to let Annie stay with her adoptive parents: “I can’t speak. Can’t breathe. My words are smothered in pain. I lived to find her, to keep her. What will I live for now?”



Unable to find Billy, Kit takes refuge in Bytown with the nuns who provided humanitarian aid to the passengers at Grosse Isle. Kit has struggled to retain her faith in the face of the suffering she has witnessed and the heartbreak she has experienced. She asks the head nun Mother Bruyere how she can continue to believe in God: “She reaches for my hand. ‘Kit, great faith lives beside great doubt. If we had all the answers, we would not need faith.'”

Kit is inspired to continue her quest, but more tragedy ensues. When she finds Billy, he is sick and dying. She nurses him, desperate to prevent him from succumbing, but finally, she admits that she cannot: “The cold truth of it hits me, numbing the heat of my will. As much as I want him here with me, as badly as I need him to live, I love him too much to make him stay. Moving to his head, I rest my mouth on his one more time, only this time I don’t blow. I kiss.”

Kit is alone in a strange new world—until she is reunited with Mick. He has been searching for her, but at first, he is reluctant to confess his love again: “He won’t say the words again. Won’t nudge them out like a young robin fresh from the nest, only to see them dashed to the ground like they were in the storeroom of the ship those long months back. They perch in him, in both of us, teetering on the edge of flight. Or failure. I feel them battering their wings inside of my heart…Say it. Say it. Say it.” Finally, the young couple unites, facing their uncertain future together.



Wild Geese explores a pivotal period in North American history, examining themes of faith in the face of suffering and the power of love between family and friends.