I’ve never read anything by Amity Gaige before but idea behind this story captured my attention as I had a couple of friends who used to talk about hiking the Appalachian Trail. Told from multiple POVs, Heartwood is the story of a woman who goes missing while hiking the trail and the search for her. This is definitely a non-traditional thriller but still quite gripping, and I loved the wildness descriptions. Thanks so much to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me access to an advanced copy of Heartwood.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heartwood-amity-gaige/1146399497?ean=9781668063606&bvnotificationId=a122afee-0f3a-11f0-8bea-0efac8be9935&bvmessageType=REVIEW_APPROVED&bvrecipientDomain=gmail.com#review/341841182

What a book! I am entranced by the Appalachian Trail and those that decide to hike it (or at least try).
This story is about Valerie, a forty-two year old nurse, who has set out to walk the trail alone. The book starts out with a letter that she writes to her mother from the trail. Valerie is lost. She was supposed to meet her husband at the meet up point two days before.

The search for Valerie is headed up by Lt. Bev of the Warden Service of Maine. The hunt for Valerie is very personal for her. She's a woman in charge in a "man's world". Giving up is not something she will do when it comes to trying to rescue a hiker.

Then there's Lena. She lives in a senior facility and is in a wheel chair. She doesn't belong in that world, either. She just wants to be left alone. However, she just may have the answer to the question of where Valerie is.

This was a really good book. You get bits of all of these women's lives, the changes that overtake them throughout the story. You get their hearts, their spirits, and their drive. I couldn't stop reading this, or read fast enough. Awesome story!

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the e-book. All thoughts are my own.

Captivating read. You won't want to put this down until you find out whether Valerie will be rescued from her ill-fated hike of the Appalachian Trail. Interspersed with her reflections while lost in the woods are the perspectives of others concerned with her fate. These include Lt. Bev, the game warden in charge of the rescue operation, and Lena, a lonely older woman who see shades of her daughter in Valerie.

The Appalachian Trail--specifically, the part that runs through Maine--feels like its own character in the story. Between the rich descriptions of the backwoods surrounding the trail and the stories from Valerie's months-long adventure, I felt like I was experiencing the woods alongside Valerie and Bev.

Ultimately, this is a story of perseverance for each of the three women through whom the story is told. It's a story of mothers and daughter, one focused on forgiveness, acceptance, and love. And it manages to be all these things without being cloying.

Highly recommend!

Scenic, savory, and suspenseful... I was up well past my bedtime. What an open and honest love letter to nature and self. Told in different points of view through multiple formats, I stepped off the trail and got lost in the pages, only to emerge once the last word was read. Impressive.

A riveting, suspenseful drama focusing on three separate woman-one lost while hiking, the detective charged with rescuing her and a bystander that has a gravitational need to assist in the search. While still with an overall wilderness survival search and rescue plot, there is an underlying, empowering theme the mother/daughter relationship dynamic. I remained intrigued and admired how the three main characters tribulations were interwoven and connected. This would make for a great book-club read and discussion.

Literally, heartwood is “the older harder nonliving central wood of trees that is usually darker, denser, less permeable, and more durable than the surrounding sapwood” according to Merriam-Webster. When Appalachian Trail hiker Valerie goes missing, she and the women searching for her find their own figurative heartwood through interconnected stories of mothers and daughters. Valerie’s storyline is told in a series of letters she writes to her mother while she’s lost. I’m a total sucker for outdoor adventure and survival and loved this book. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The book reads like a thriller but is so much more nuanced. I loved the little communities of people portrayed- the hikers, the searchers, Lena and her friends at the senior home. All of them are seeking something, lost in some way, but find fellowship with their fellow travelers. These stories within the story were so compelling- I couldn’t put it down. Perfect pacing, no notes.

Heartwood by Amity Paige (Simon & Schuster, 1 April 2025) is about the search for Valerie Gillis, a fortyish nurse who decides to hike the Appalachian Trail and disappears near the end in Maine, the most rugged part of the trail. Lieutenant Beverly Miller is the Maine game warden organizing the search and rescue teams, including volunteers and K-9s.
Told from multiple points of view, the story is hard to follow sometimes, as the connection between some of the narrators is not clear. While waiting to be found, Valerie writes a journal about her experience, directing her notes to her mother and reflecting upon their relationship. Beverly has the greater part of the narration as she describes the daily search plans and the attempts to gain more information about Valerie to try to understand where and how she might have gotten off the trail. Then a 76-year-old wheelchair-bound nature enthusiast named Lena Kucharski in an assisted living facility in Connecticut writes about her failed relationship with her daughter and her uneasiness living among so many people. Her online friendship with a survivalist is her primary distraction, which turns out to be unexpectedly helpful. She has no apparent link to either Beverly or Valerie.

The hiker who walked with Valerie most of the way, Ruben Serrano, gets almost as much space as Lena does, and transcripts of interviews with family and friends form chapters. Notes from other hikers who met Valerie along the trail and from the public saying the caller knows where Valerie is or that they saw her yesterday, no doubt similar to those received during a real-life search, break up the longer sections.

I cannot easily categorize this book. It shows up on NetGalley in the Mystery and Thriller section. I suppose it can be called a low-key thriller, perhaps suspense is a better term. It can also be categorized as women’s fiction, since the three main characters are women at turning points in their lives.

The gradual increase in tension in the action is restrained but noticeable. I found the book propulsive, despite its disorderly flow, and insightful in its examination of individual relationships with people and with nature and how well an individual balances those needs with their own needs.

Readers who like nature-focused mysteries or search and rescue stories or find the Appalachian Trail fascinating should consider this book. In some ways it reminds me of The Left-Handed Twin by Thomas Perry, in which its protagonist is pursued through the wilderness of Maine.

Starred review from Booklist.

I picked this one up recently and flew through it within a week. I was immediately sucked into this story of a lost hiker on the Appalachian Trail and those who are helping find her. What initially felt like a lost hiker mystery turns into a bit of a character study of the three women involved: Valerie, the missing hiker, Bev, the warden leading her search party, and Lena, an elderly arm-chair detective who is following the case.

I wasn't sure how all their stories would converge, but really enjoyed the adventure along the way. I saw that this one was selected as one of #jennasbookclub and I think it'll make for a great book club discussion. At the heart of the story, it is about women finding themselves, whether that's through doing a solo backpacking trip, reconnecting with an estranged family member or putting all your energy into helping someone else. There's also an interesting subplot about a hidden government base off the AT that I kind of wanted a bit more of.

Do I have some unanswered questions? Sure.

But was I entertained? Totally.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free digital ARC. This was not at all what I expected. Yes, there’s a missing hiker and the search for her is at the core of the narrative, but this isn’t really a mystery or thriller. It’s about three women - Valerie, the missing hiker; Bev, the Maine Warden leading the search; and Lena, an elderly woman in Connecticut who is invested in the search. It’s about who they are, what formed them, and how they navigate through the world. It’s not the kind of character study I would ordinarily pick up, but it’s well-written and engaging, and I was invested in the outcome from the beginning.

I didn't understand the title until I was almost finished with the book.
Good main character; I rooted for her.
Good scene setting; I felt like I was in the woods.

The chapters did go back and forth between Valerie, the missing woman, and Bev, the park warden, and Lena, an older woman in a senior community.

It kept me guessing.

It also made me realize how arduous Vev's line of work could be.

Finally, there were several mother-daughter relationships compared.

This book kept me reading.

What a story! I really enjoyed this book and found it so unputdownable. I wanted to find out what happened to Sparrow.
I can see why this book is the Read with Jenna pick for April. Readers going to love this multi-pov about a search for the missing hiker on the Appalachian Trail.

Other things I enjoyed
The letters Valerie writes to her mom
The way the story unfolded
The intrigue and wonder on what happened to Valerie
The deeper look at the searchers
The ending

It’s spring, but it’s that part of spring when winter still looks over your shoulder. Nice days come and go with more frequency, but still, they go, as though the cold months are warning you not to get too comfortable. Don’t relax. Not yet.

Late winter was a great time to read Amity Gaige’s latest, HEARTWOOD, out today, a story about a hiker who goes missing off the Maine leg of the Appalachian Trail. The story toggles among three perspectives: missing hiker Valerie Gillis, Maine State Game Warden Bev, and Lena, a birdwatcher and forager who can’t quite settle into life in her retirement community in Connecticut.

Gillis, a nurse, muses at one point in the novel that no one decides to hike the Appalachian Trail because they are happy. Everyone, even the thin and pretty hikers with plenty of energy, she says, cracks after a couple hundred miles, reveals their true selves. Their hangups. Their tragedies.

If this book stayed with Valerie for too long, it would have veered into THE VASTER WILDS (Lauren Groff, 2023) territory, but it doesn’t. (No hate to Groff, loved that book.) While yes, one third of the story line is about survival (and unraveling the mystery of how, exactly, Valerie became lost), the other two voices balance the story. Lt. Bev is grappling with her approaching retirement, as well as her conflicting allegiances to her arduous, male-dominated career, and to her dying mother, who never approved of her masculine job choice in the first place.

And then, of course, there’s Lena. It’s not clear, for a good long while, how Lena connects to Valerie and Lt. Bev’s storylines, which are obvious in their overlap. Lena, in her seventies, is an enthusiastic birder and forager, attempting to persist in both these hobbies while living in a neatly groomed retirement facility. Estranged from her daughter, she turns to internet forums to make friends and discuss the intricacies of wild food. She becomes fixated on Valerie’s case when her dearest internet friend begins spinning conspiracy theories about where Valerie had gone missing. A scientist at heart, Lena falls into the sticky connective tissue that can make these kinds of theories feel bigger, and more real, than they actually are. And also, a bunch of other stuff I can’t tell you because then there would be no point in reading!

This is very much a literary thriller and, if you can stomach conversations about what it might feel like to starve to death (I am weak and I made it through), I really enjoyed this one. Also, for the New England set, Lt. Bev is from Leominster! North Central Mass. (where I used to work as a local reporter, covering Leominster), makes many an appearance. A delightful surprise!

“Heartwood,” by Amity Gaige, Simon & Schuster, 320 pages, April 1, 2025.

Valerie Gillis. 42, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker, is missing about 200 miles from her final destination. She has been hiking for three months. There’s no cell phone service on that stretch of the trail.

Valerie, a nurse, writes in her journal a series of letters to her mother as she struggles to stay alive. Her trail name is Sparrow. Her husband, Gregory Bouras, reported her missing.

Lt. Beverly Miller, a Maine State Game Warden, leads the search on the ground. She’s been in the business of finding people lost in the woods for 30 years. She and Bob Cross head the incident management team for their district. Warden Cody Ouellette interviews Ruben Serrano, an overweight Black man, who uses the trail name Santo. He hiked with Valerie in Pennsylvania, but he quit his hike in Vermont.

Lena Kulcharski, 76, a birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an armchair detective. She is talking to someone in a chat room who goes by the online name Terrible Silence. He lives in Bethel, Maine. He thinks he knows what happened to Valerie.

The characters are good and the depictions of conflict between mothers and daughters are realistic. The descriptions of how searches are done fascinating. The novel does drag a bit towards the middle, but it has a good ending.

I rate it four out of five stars.

In accordance with FTC guidelines, the advance reader's edition of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Gage puts a more literary take on a survival thriller here, and overall I liked this approach. Valerie is in the middle of a months-long hike when she disappears, and the book alternates between Valerie, the warden in charge of the search, and a lady in a retirement home who suddenly feels drawn to follow the case. I definitely was most engaged with Valerie’s parts, and since it is more of a literary story it goes into a lot of background on each character which I didn’t feel was always necessary but overall a solid, quick read.

What I liked about this read, which on its face is not one I would resonate positively with, is that we're not in doubt about Valerie's disappearance. We're reading her letters to her mom as the search for her unfolds. And yet it's a thriller...so how does Amity Gaige pull that off?

Deftly.

Honestly I'm still allergic to the Cult of Mother stuff...you'll have noticed an absence of any part of a fifth star...but the beautiful nature descriptions and the bleeding honesty of the toll that living in times celebrating dehumanizing "values" earned all four remaining stars. Leaving out the mother-daughter mealymouthing would've earned at least another half, just for Valerie's impressive if misused commitment to helping. Everyone, except herself...and how'd that little poison pill get in there. We do see that realization come to her. Her early-story-days burnout from nursing nursing nursing during COVID's worst days means she's in need of time to process and consolidate her new emotional world...that won't include the husband she does't love anymore, but who is her logistical support on this trip....

Beverly the Maine warden tasked with finding Valerie before her week's-worth of supplies runs out is, well, standard. She's a salty salt-of-the-earth supercompetent woman who throws herself into a job she's damned good at...to avoid dealing with her mother's steady decline into death. It's not like this is a groundbreaking idea. It is, however, very relatable; Beverly is rewarded and praised for the good work she does when other work must be neglected to do it. Work she does not want to do. "Women's work." Caring for her mother is...just too hard, given the older woman's dereliction of care for her, and effective devolution of care for Bev's sisters onto her too-young shoulders. Finding strangers who are a lot less competent than she is? Easy; and very much needed in the huge spaces that Maine has never "developed."

Lena is retired, lives a dull life of nothing much except chatting about birds to an unknown-in-meatspace mystery soul after her "useful" existence is done with her. She's sharp; she's savvy; she's got online skills that enable her to help Valerie and Beverly; so she does. I liked her best...I am her, I guess that won't surprise anyone that I think she's a good'un. She's estranged from her only child; she's difficult and spiky; and still can't resist doing something useful in despite of her physical disability. Yup. Thass me. The style of storytelling allows one to follow the developments, even Lena's, in the story's real time. It really worked on me.

How it all fits together is the fun of the read. I won't spoiler it because I am boot-quakingly afraid of the Spoiler Stasi. I'll say that misdirection я Amity. I had a firm opinion about where this was going and, when it got to the Big Reveal, I was correct. It gave me a lovely warm glow of satisfaction.

What makes this good Book Club Fiction™ is this mélange of traits, but most especially the dull mother-daughter conflicts. My own mother was awful; I do my goddamnedest to think around and past her gargoyle-statue-shaped lump in my head. But I've had decades of therapy and most of y'all ain't, so stories told about this feel better to you. I think Jenna Bush Hager picked a great iteration of the undistinguished, indistinguishable mass of Book Club Fiction™ to show y'all.

Buy one to say thank you to a talented author with her finger on The Pulse℠, and a celeb who's Book Club Fiction™ taste is solidly on the side of craft mastery instead of glam glitz and suchlike gubbins.

Not at all mad I read it.

What an absolutely beautiful well written book. Living in the Appalachias this really hits home. Thank you for the opportunity to read this arc.

Heartwood is a suspenseful novel about Valerie Gillis, a 42-year-old hiker who disappears along the Appalachian Trail in Maine. As she battles for survival, writing letters to her mother, the narrative also follows Beverly, a Maine State Game Warden leading the search, and Lena, a 76-year-old birdwatcher turned armchair detective. The story explores themes of survival, human connection to nature, and complex family relationships.

Review:

i have no notes. this novel was astonishingly beautiful, taking us on a journey we never expected to end so bittersweet. did i cry at the end? yah, absolutely. everything felt so finite, yet laced with a tinge of hope. i love bev, lena, and valerie—three strong, flawed women. i love what this novel says about hope, about losing it, searching for it, and how it shifts from woman to woman. i could go on and on, but this was truly a phenomenal read.

Wow! I wished I had not rushed through it because it is that good. A throw back to the remnants of Wild by Cheryl Strayed refreshes the struggles and challenges of hiking she experienced when deciding to do the hike on a whim. Another book if you like this topic is Into the Wild about Chris McCandless by Jon Krakauer.
On a different trail, Valerie decides to hike the Appalachian Trail for 2,000 miles. When she doesn't show up at one of her checkpoints only 200 miles from her destination, a search team is dispatched. The story covers online updates, interviews, tips, and assignments for the team. It also shares the letters she writes to her mother about the elements and struggles she faces.
"The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found." The documentation in her final moments of the hike are all crucial tips. There are many threats, such as the time lapse between her disappearance, not enough supplies and injuries can all diminish her survival chances.
One of the POVs is Game Warden Beverly who seeks approval from others that she can do the job of finding Valerie, building anticipation and suspense. This character is well-portrayed and likable. Throughout I had mixed emotions about what had happened. I have hiked through the Great Smoky Mountains alone. My time spent in redemption and restoration with a foreboding that I'm not safe. Usually it was after I laid down at night and thought maybe I shouldn't have done that. The book weighs heavily on her personal battles. The need for the hike comes after the peak of COVID where Valerie wore herself down trying to meet the demands of so many sick people, as well as death.
The other POV is Lena, who lives in a retirement community and helps from her home with the search. Both of these characters are well thought out and in depth with their own lives and struggles.
Well-written in the suspense category!
Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this incredible ARC in exchange for my honest review

This gripping literary thriller weaves together the lives of three women: Valerie, a nurse who vanishes while hiking the Appalachian Trail; Lt. Bev, a Maine game warden leading the search for her; and Lena, a 70-year-old nursing home resident who becomes fixated on Valerie’s disappearance through online conversations with a Reddit forager. Though their stories unfold unevenly at times, the novel remains compelling, largely due to the unique yet interconnected experiences of these three fully fleshed out women.

Although the ending is somewhat predictable, the novel’s strength lies in its lyrical writing, exploration of female resilience, and poignant mother-daughter themes. Valerie’s journal entries and poetry, written as she struggles to survive in the wilderness, are particularly moving. Bev and Lena also stand out as richly developed characters, with Lena’s transformation from an isolated woman to a grandmotherly figure adding emotional depth to the story.

Ultimately, this novel keeps you turning the pages, eager to see how these three women’s paths converge. This thoughtful, atmospheric thriller resonates most in its exploration of survival, connection, and the inner lives of women.

I have been on something of a Maine-kick lately. From Stephen King to Richard Russo to Linda Holmes to John Irving, I have found myself drawn over and over to stories set in Maine. So of course I was over the moon to read Heartwood and further fulfill my never-ending need for more Maine stories.

In Heartwood, Valerie, and experienced hiker, goes missing. Her disappearance stirs up work for both local law enforcement and amateur detectives, all looking into what could possible have happened to her. An unexpected story with so much to offer, I loved Heartwood and it was nothing like I would have imagined when I read the premise.