Sydney convinces her father to let him live in the family house until they find his family. Since Michael can talk, he is no longer of any use to Dr. He thinks that if you are nice to others, they will be nice back to you. Although he is intelligent, he does not understand how to behave with other people very well. He reveals that he can read because before he was lost at sea, he learned how to do so.Ī man named Michael MacNeil has been around animals and books about etiquette for the past twenty years. As time goes by, they grow closer together as friends and eventually fall in love with each other. However, when she meets the prisoner and sees his intelligence shining through his eyes, she agrees to help them with their experiments about altruism because of how much she cares for him. She thinks it’s cruel, but they explain that he’s there for scientific reasons. Sydney is shocked to find that her father has been keeping a man imprisoned in their basement. Winter thinks that he’s the perfect test case for his theories about altruism because it will be easy to see if this behavior is learned or intrinsic to humans. The young man can’t speak and seems feral so Dr.

He, his assistant Charles, and Sydney’s older brother Philip have found a young man who was lost in the woods before he was ten years old and spent two decades living with wolves in Canada. Winter is a talented scientist who has just discovered something about human nature. Her aunt Estelle took over the household after Sydney’s mother died.ĭr. He was always more interested in his scientific experiments than he was with his children. When Sydney returns home, she falls back into her old habits of trying to please her family and looking for approval from her father. Now Sydney is returning to her family home in Michigan where she will live with her father, two brothers and an aunt. Although they loved each other, their relationship lacked passion. Sydney Darrow’s husband died after a year of marriage. The two eventually fall in love with each other, but it’s difficult for them because of their differences. It follows a young woman who moves back to her childhood home and discovers a man living alone in the woods near her house. Wild at Heart by Patricia Gaffney is a romance novel that takes place in the late 1800s. 1-Page Summary of Wild At Heart Overall Summary