I can already tell this book will be one of my favorites this year. I didn't want to put it down. I thought this book was beautifully written.

Heartwood is a tale of survival, resilience, and hope set in the backwoods of Maine.
Valerie Gillis, a 42-year-old nurse is hiking the Appalachian Trail in an attempt to cope with post COVID burn out. She is very near the end of her journey, when she goes missing and is declared lost along the trail.
Lt. Beverly Miller is the Maine State Game Warden charged with the massive search and rescue mission undertaken in hopes of locating the missing hiker.
Lena is a 70-something Connecticut retirement community resident whose wilderness survival and foraging skills
As the days pass and Valerie’s survival becomes less and less likely, the lives of these three women unexpectedly intersect when Valerie disappears from the trail.
Gaige writes with tension that has the reader anxiously awaiting the outcome, and builds a cast of complex characters. The novel explores a variety of themes with particular focus on mother/daughter relationships and the fragility of human circumstance.

As someone who’s lived in Maine near that stretch of the AT, it has always seemed like a haunting and intense setting rife for this sort of story. The author did a great job playing with the intensity of the area and concept. The narrative structure and tone felt intimate and raised the stakes, making it a grabbing and quick paced read from page one. The multiple different perspectives and mediums made for a real solid mystery.

I thoroughly enjoyed Heartwood. Educational, interesting, suspenseful and realistic. So descriptive, I felt I was on the dense trail, in the stinky bog, and on the drying moss. Amity Gaige has written an adventurous story!

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Valerie goes missing on the Appalachian Trail and the story unfolds in many directions from there. We see this story from three main points of view including Valerie the lost hiker, Beverly the warden organizing the searches to find her and Lena a lonely lost in her own way older woman turned armchair detective.

I love the way the story jumps around to all the different points of view. I also like that though this story is about Valerie being lost it’s not just that. We learn a lot about all of the characters lives, struggles, needs and wants. This is a slower burn different kind of mystery “thriller.” It’s beautifully descriptive and thoughtful. I think the middle lagged a bit and some of those pages could have been used to extend the character “wrap ups” which I think may have been my favorite parts. I also find it’s interesting while also heartbreaking that it was inspired by a real lost hiker.

All and all it was a different kind of story that was refreshing and worth a read. Thank you Simon Books, Amity Gaige, and NetGalley for the eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Valerie is missing from the Appalachian Trail with just 20 miles left to hike to her next rendezvous point. Bev, the senior game warden is frustrated that no matter how much information her team gathers, and how many searches are conducted, it appears that Valerie has just disappeared. Lena, living in a retirement home has always been a loner, buried in her studies and finally connecting with an Internet friend who provides her with the semblance of a social life. Each of these characters has their own backstory and author Gaige manages to weave them together into a page turning hunt for the missing hiker. As the days go by, chances of finding Valerie alive are greatly diminished. With thousands of calls to the tip line to sift through will Bev's team find and act upon the correct one in time?

As the possible reasons for Valerie's disappearance start to pile up, it is up to the reader to discern which of these possible scenarios could be the one which will lead to finding Valerie before it is too late. A bit slow to start but once the action begins, it is a fast read to the end.

I enjoyed ‘Heartwood’, it moves at a good pace with each chapter wanting the reader to find out more. All of the characters have a vital role to play in the quest to find Valerie ‘the sparrow’ Gillis who has got lost (or worse) walking the Appalachian Trail.
There are enough twists and turns to hold my interest and enough heart to the characters to keep me invested in each of them. I also came away feeling like I had learn a little bit about the trail and the states it meanders through!

This book was incredible. It was unexpectedly moving and beautiful. I connected with all the characters and was breathlessly rooting for Valarie and the team looking for her.

Valerie is a 42 year old nurse. She made it through working at the hospital through covid. After all the long hours she is burned out and ready for a change. She decides to hike the Appalachian trail. She meets people on the trail that treat her like family until an unlikely event happens that forces her off the trail and she ends up lost in the woods.

I was really impressed with the authors writing style and ability to turn this book into a compelling story. I loved it and can’t wait to read her next!

Thank you to netgalley for a copy of this book.

I am a sucker for stories set in the North Woods, and this is one of the best. The characters were fully developed, and I was touched by how much they cared about finding the lost hiker. I read the whole thing in one day because I could not put it down.

I could not put this book down. I finished it in a day because I needed to know that Valerie Gillis would be found and survived. The author did not reveal the connection between Lena, many miles away in a nursing home, and Valerie until the ending of the story. At that point the story wrapped up quickly. The story ends well and personal conflicts are solved.

Thanks NetGalley for this arc in exchange for my honest review. Overall this was good, the first half was more fast pace than the second but enjoyed it nonetheless.

I have no desire to participate in any type of hiking expedition or culture, especially those that involve hundreds of miles or traversing mountains. However, I find the stories of those who do embark on such journeys incredibly interesting. Having listened to Cheryl Strayed’s account in "Wild," I’m quite familiar with the nuances of trail life. The friendships formed along the way, the journal entries made during breaks, and even the donation boxes outside an outpost that can be life-changing—these all resonate. "Heartwood" recapped many of these scenarios and added more insights into hiking culture, but the primary difference lies in the fear of getting lost.

Valerie did not reach her last checkpoint while hiking the Appalachian Trail through Maine. It is not unusual for a hiker to arrive late to a checkpoint, but when it's clear that something is amiss, a search begins. Beverly, a Maine State Game Warden, is assigned to the search and understands the urgency of finding Valerie within the next few days. Valerie wouldn’t have enough supplies to last more than a week, and if she has strayed far off the trail and become injured, her chances of survival diminish significantly.

Over the following days, the narrative splits between the searchers and Valerie herself, who documents what she believes to be her final moments in a journal for her mother. We discover that there is something more sinister behind her disappearance, and her survival hangs on her unwillingness to give up hope. A crucial tip about her whereabouts arrives late in the search, which might be Beverly’s only chance of finding Valerie.

Although this novel is labeled as a thriller, I would temper those expectations by saying that the thrill element is quite low. Nevertheless, the plot builds anticipation over time, and I became genuinely invested in Valerie’s story. The research into hiking culture is accurate, and I appreciated the inclusion of anecdotes from other hikers who crossed paths with Valerie during her journey.

Gripping page-turner about a woman who goes missing on the Appalachian Trail in the deep woods of Maine. It features three women. Valerie Gillis is a nurse who has suffered burn-out after her experiences in caring for COVID patients. She has hiked from West Virginia to Maine but has not arrived at a checkpoint where she was supposed to meet her husband. Lieutenant Beverly Miller is a Game Warden in charge of the search. She is experiencing personal issues with her sisters and ailing mother. Lena Kucharski is an older woman living at a care facility. She is wheelchair bound, estranged from her daughter, and has difficulty forming friendships.

The story is told in several formats: Valerie keeps a journal, writing letters to her mother to attempt to keep her sanity while she is lost in the wilderness. Bev holds press conferences, directs the overall search effort, and interacts with her staff, relatives of the missing, and other agencies. Lena interacts with her fellow residents and communicates with a nature enthusiast by an online messaging system, where she learns of the missing hiker.

The Author’s Note indicates that the story is fictional but loosely based on a real situation. The story is well-crafted and beautifully written. It addresses the stresses of the pandemic, and the need to heal afterward, without being focused on the pandemic itself. It also focuses on mother-daughter relationships. I found myself engrossed in the story. There were a couple of plot points that stretched belief, but overall, I enjoyed it very much. I look forward to keeping tabs on the author to see what she writes next. I can also recommend Gaige’s Sea Wife.

Valerie is close to finishing the months-long and 2000-plus miles long Appalachian trail when she goes missing. To keep herself sane, she writes unsent letters to her mother, which tells the reader how she got into her predicament.

It’s also told from the point of view of Beverly, the Maine State Game Warden, who had a great track record of finding lost hikers—up until now.

Then, in Connecticut, we have Lena, who lives in a retirement community but keeps to herself as much as possible, preferring her online chats with a stranger. When she hears about Valerie, she does some online sleuthing.

The story unfolds about the rescue of Valerie, but also how these women came to be where they are. Valerie, a nurse who, after Covid, needed some space. Bev, a six-foot-tall woman who succeeded in a male-dominated career. Lena, an intelligent woman who wasn’t also given credit for the way she thought about the world.

NetGalley provided an advance copy of this novel, which RELEASES MARCH 25, 2025.

This is a mystery/wilderness survival story told from three women's point of view. A woman is lost on the Appalachian Trail and a search is mounted to find her. That's the heart of the story but there's much more to be discovered by the reader. This isn't my usual type of book, but I enjoyed it and it was well written. My favorite parts were about the Trail itself since I grew up near part of it and have family that have hiked it.

Set in the Appalachian Trail and told from three POVs, this story revolves around the disappearance of a 42 year old woman, and the desperate search for her.

This book is for those who love quiet, character-driven stories with beautiful prose. It’s a story about nature, survival, and mother daughter relationships, with a very slow burn mystery at its core.

I really wanted to love this, but unfortunately I just wasn’t the right audience for it. While the mystery of what happened to Valerie kept me curious and turning the pages, I was left feeling unsatisfied and underwhelmed with how the story wrapped up. I just felt like I needed more. As someone who is not outdoorsy at all, I did appreciate all the information and knowledge about hiking and the Appalachian Trail that I learned from this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I absolutely loved this book. It grabbed me from page one and did not let go. The pace was perfect, I was so into the story I would wake up in the middle of the night to read just to know what was going to happen. The characters are wonderfully written and full of life that you can feel beyond the pages of the book. With this book you will be pulled in by so many different aspects of it. I read a NetGalley copy.

I received an e-ARC and am giving my honest review.

This was incredible. Absolutely stunning. Each character’s POV and storyline were so well written and connected, I loved figuring out more and more about the story and what was happening through each character and how r they told their story. I won’t lie, I did like Valerie’s POV the most, but each and every character was so captivating I didn’t find myself bored once. I loved how many plausible options we had for what had happened up until the end. So many questions, and being given a very satisfying ending with an equally satisfying conclusion to Valerie’s story! I liked trying to figure out how the characters could be/were connected, being wrong or right and seeing what that did. All of the ways that bits to throw the reader off of what the true ending was was so well done, perfectly written in a way that wasn’t drawing even more attention to it, but instead giving us more questions as to what’s going on. With many other books, it feels like red herons are thrown out and then done nothing with or overdone so that the reader is then left feeling disappointed by the ending, but through the entire story you are either wondering how Valerie got into the situation she is, or wondering who got her there. And the split between the two makes it so you never think about either question too long to make it boring. I just adored this, so so well written. Not just the thriller but the grief the parents felt, the onlookers’ emotions and feelings, Lieutenant Bev and her fierce determination and guilt. Every single character was beautifully written and fleshed out.
Incredible job to the author. This was so, so good.

“Heartwood” by Amity Gaige is an emotional story of three women, all of them lost in the past, one of them physically lost in the present. It’s also a reflective story of mother/daughter relationships, good ones and bad ones.

The major POVs:
Valerie Gillis, a nurse burned out by her COVID experiences, has already hiked 1900 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Nearing the end in Maine, she fails to show up at a checkpoint where her husband was waiting. Her POV consists of journal letters to her mother while she’s lost.

Lt. Beverly Miller, State Game Warden, one of the first female officers, knows that 97% of the time they find a lost person within 24 hours. Valerie, however, has fallen into the 3% of lost more than a day and maybe never found. Where she stepped off the trail is an area so remote that it will take search teams several hours just to get to her last known sighting. We learn a lot about the motivations of searchers — “A lot of folks who get into search and rescue have an early memory of watching someone perish. Mainers search for each other in the woods. It’s what we do.”

Lena Kucharski, a reluctant online sleuth, is a 76 year old wheelchair bound resident of a care home hundreds of miles away in Massachusetts. She’s drawn to the case because Valerie’s profile (a 42 year old nurse) resembles her estranged daughter. Lena has been communicating on Reddit/Telegram with a forager in Maine who might know the search area.

Other voices include “Santo,” a trail buddy; her husband Gregory; and her elderly parents.

Loosely based on the story of a 66 year old hiker who went missing in 2013 on the Appalachian Trail. Even so, the story is touching and suspenseful coming from three distinct voices and the author brilliantly weaves the three perspectives together. We feel their heartbreak and frustration.

There’s lots of reflection on missed personal opportunities and the force of nature. Since the timeline is just after the worst times of the pandemic and the isolation and grief of that period is still evident. The three main characters are all solitary by choice. It’s possible you might not totally identify with Val, Bev, or Lena, but each one of them, even after tears and despair, believes in some sort of hope.

This is an emotional book, but well-constructed and a fairly easy read. I was fascinated by the mechanics of a lost person search, and gratified with every clue that brings everyone closer to Valerie. 4.5 stars. Some of the past introspection seemed a tad long, so one-half star less than the full 5.

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): YES Badger has ethereal green eyes.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO There quite a bit about foraging for survival in the book (although I probably wouldn’t eat grubs, either).

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy!

Thoroughly gripping in plot and writing, this novel is told through multiple viewpoints - a Maine Game Warden who organizes the search for a missing Appalachian Trail hiker, the hiker's increasingly non-sensical journal entries, interview transcripts from people who encountered her on the Trail, and the story of an elderly woman following the search as she reckons with the sporadic of her online friend. As the narratives intertwine and reach conclusions, the emotional lives of them all are exposed, evaluated, and interpreted by the reader. Incredibly compelling, I couldn't put it down and loved it as much as I did the author's novel Schroeder several years ago.