The Great Northwest Books in Order

The Great Northwest series heads into the rough, ambitious world of the nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest. Railroads, timber, shipping, and national rivalry are all pushing the region into a new era, and Linda Chaikin builds her stories around the people trying to rise with that change, or simply survive it.

The first book introduces Ember Ridgeway, Tavish Wilder, and the hard-driving forces around railroad expansion and timber wealth. The second widens the lens through Savana MacKenzie and the question of political allegiance in a region shaped by British, Russian, and American interests. So while the series is only two books long, it still feels broad in scope.

This is frontier history with money on the table.

What makes the series work is that ambition is not treated as a simple virtue. Characters want land, power, respect, belonging, and love, but the books keep asking what price comes with those wants. Timber camps, rail lines, and shipping routes are practical realities here, not decorative background, and they create the pressure under many of the characters' decisions.

Chaikin also uses the Northwest well as a mood. It is not a dusty western landscape. It is wetter, harsher, and more layered, with forests, coastal travel, and unsettled political claims shaping the feel of the books. That gives the series a slightly different energy from her pirate or court-centered stories.

Romance is still important, of course, but it grows inside questions of identity and future. Ember has to decide what sort of life money can and cannot give her. Savana must weigh loyalty, heritage, and trust in a place where allegiance is never just personal. The Wilder men, too, are tied to the larger push of the era, which helps the books feel connected.

If you enjoy historical fiction about building, expansion, and the moral costs of success, this short series is worth a look. It has Chaikin's usual mix of danger and feeling, but with a distinctly northern, frontier edge.