The Discovery of Finnegan Wildeby Caroline Pignat, Illustrations by Alan CrannyPublished by Thistledown PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$16.95 ISBN 9781771872874 It’s daunting to receive a 406-page novel for review. If poorly-written, it’s a tremendous slog to read. On the flip side, if the story’s seeped in richly-described settings, features distinct and memorable characters, and showcases deft plotting (including a major twist), the pages quickly slip by. Fortunately, The Discovery of Finnegan Wilde—a historical novel for young adults by Governor-General Award-winning writer Caroline Pignat—fell firmly into the latter camp. My first surprise was that the title character is a girl. Fifteen-year-old Finn lives rough on the streets of 1913 Dublin. She “was in the business of surviving,” which included pickpocketing, and “lying was Finn’s mother tongue.” The scrawny lass has no memory of family, is targeted by another young urchin, Dooley, and—when she can escape the Woodhall Workhouse orphanage where she’s kept in a medicated fog—she sleeps beneath “a rusted sheet of metal,” cold, hungry, and among rats. This lively book’s two other important characters are Eddie, a lonely apprentice archaeologist (under his archaeologist father) at the National Museum, and the 9th century monk, Tomás, who penned a mysterious illustrated manuscript,…