I absolutely loved this book. It was so well-written, I felt like I was right there on the Appalachian Trail. I loved the construction of the story viewed from various perspectives. I couldn't stop reading because I had to find the connections. And Beverly, oh Beverly! You are fabulous. If I ever get lost in the woods, I hope you are on the search team. This is the first book I've read by Amity Gaige, but I will definitely be going back to find more of her work. A story of community, family, and grit. Never give up!

Lyrical. Captivating. Mysterious. Would repeat

There was something so poetic and beautiful about this simple missing person story. I felt completely immersed in Valerie’s rescue and journey. Recommend if you need a slow literary fiction mystery.

Into the Wild was one of my favorite novels growing up -- my dog-eared paperback edition traveled from my hometown to my college dorm to off-campus apartments and the like. At 35, I still have that faithful copy displayed on my bookshelf. Needless to say, I was immediately drawn to Heartwood after reading the description. Although there was nothing nefarious about Into the Wild, I felt the same desolate wilderness involved in Heartwood, which stole the show. This was truly the definition of an atmospheric novel and a must read for 2025!

Many thanks to Netgalley and publishers for providing my review copy. There's nothing like a survival story told with a full cast of characters. I was hooked from the start!

This book was everything I look for in a book - excellent writing, beautiful character crafting, and a great story. I absolutely loved how everything came together in the end and cried at the hopefulness of it all.

Oh gosh.... I really wanted to love this one.

I have been seeing so many amazing reviews! But, I feel like this was a bit of a mess. Lots of hype with writing stories around people being lost in the woods. I was honestly pretty bored.... and was wanting a lot more from this.

Also.. that ending. This book definitely had potential but it was lacking so much depth and just a let down.

Sadly, can't recommend this one :(.

2/5 stars

Thank you to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
Put aside some time because you won't be able to put this down! At its heart this is a search and rescue novel about 42 year old Valerie who is lost on the Appalachian Trail 200 miles from her destination. Realizing her plight she writes letters to her mother detailing this harrowing experience as she waits for rescue.

Beverly, a Maine State Game warden is determined to find Valerie while casting suspicion on her partner who left the trail early. Even more mysterious is Lena, a retired Connecticut woman who participates in the search from her retirement home with the use of her computer. Needless to say suspicion is cast in all directions and no stone is left unturned. To give anymore detail of the search would give away the plot. This is an edge of your seat race against the clock with an ending that you definitely will not see coming! Buckle up!!

When a person disappears, people search until they find the lost person—dead or alive. When the person is never found, that’s failure. Gaige uses the search for a missing person as a metaphor for the kind of loss of connection that frequently occurs within families. These losses are just as tragic but often no one ever searches for solutions, so they end in failure. Notwithstanding these realities, Gaige’s stories do end on hopeful notes.

Gaige uses three female protagonists in her novel. Valerie Gillis is a middle-aged nurse recovering from her horrific experience during the Covid pandemic by hiking the Appalachian Trail. Lt. Beverly Miller is at the end of a successful career finding lost people in the Maine woods as part of the Warden Service. She’s single and decidedly unfeminine. Lena Kucharski is an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman living a bland existence in a Connecticut assisted living facility. She is a retired scientist with an intense interest in foraging. Each of these women has relational problems: Valerie has grown distant from her devoted spouse and seems overly dependent on her mother; Bev’s mother is in hospice down in Massachusetts, but Bev refuses to take time off from her job to visit her; and Lena is estranged from her nurse daughter.

On its surface, the plot seems to be a run-of-the-mill search and rescue story where Valerie mysteriously disappears, and Bev leads a massive search to find her. All of the usual tropes are there including the suspense of time running out, overworked volunteers, and an abundance of conspiracy theories. Yet what makes this story compelling are the relationship problems that each protagonist faces. Initially these seem unrelated to the search plot, but Gaige cleverly weaves them into it.

In addition to the three protagonist voices, Gaige exploits transcripts from a tip line, newspaper accounts and interviews to embellish her story. Likewise, she evokes the threatening nature of the Maine woods and an off-limits SERE training sight to create a dark mood.

Her three main characters are nuanced, engaging, and believable. This is definitely a book about and for women. As good as she is with female characters, Gaige seems to stumble when it comes to the men in her story. They seem stereotypical and act primarily in a servant roles. Despite his function as Valerie’s sidekick, Santo is the only male character in the novel who seems believable and interesting.

In the final analysis, Gaige succeeds in giving her readers an engaging and suspenseful experience with an exciting search and three compelling characters. She brings the three plotlines together with a satisfying and surprising conclusion. Moreover, she ends with glimpses of hopeful futures for the three women.

Thank you @simonbooks for my complimentary copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

This well-written (slow burn) story explores the complexities of human experience against the rugged backdrop of the Appalachian Trail. The narrative unfolds through three distinct perspectives, each offering a unique lens on the central mystery of Valerie Gillis, a missing hiker.

BEV, is a Maine game warden. Her perspective adds an authoritative yet empathetic voice to the unfolding drama. VALERIE, the missing hiker, is portrayed through her poignant letters to her mother, revealing her emotional struggles as a burned-out nurse during the pandemic. Through Valerie's words, readers feel her isolation, hunger, and exhaustion, which heightens the tension surrounding her disappearance. Finally, there’s LENA, an elderly birdwatcher with her own theories about what might have happened to Valerie.

One of the novel's strengths lies in its exploration of motherhood and the inner journeys of each character.
However, I felt the pacing was slow at times. While the pacing may deter some, the intricate character studies and thematic depth make it a worthwhile read for those who appreciate a thought-provoking read.

When I saw this was about the search for a missing hiker on the Appalachian Trail I knew I had to read this! I also enjoyed Gaige’s previous book, Sea Wife. Heartwood follows a cast of different characters related to the search, including the missing hiker. A mix of lit fic and mystery, this was the perfect book to read 3 weeks postpartum and kept me interested enough even when I was reading it in the middle of the night.

Valerie Gillis a 42 year-old nurse struggling to figure out what to do next after the suffering of the Covid pandemic embarks on a long hike of the Appalachian trail. The story begins after she is lost and her story is told through journal entries to her mother.
Lt. Beverly is a Maine game warden in charge of the search and also battling with what she should do next as she near retirement age.
Lena is an elderly woman in an assisted living community who is immediately intrigued by the search for the missing woman.
This story starts out slowly and some of the POVs are more captivating than others. The author also uses phone calls and interviews to bring clarity to different parts of the search. Midway through the book, I was racing to figure out if Valerie would be found.
All three women are examining their lives in different ways but the theme of mother/daughter relationships permeate all three narratives. At the beginning, I wondered if they were connected by a shared relationship.
Great book-thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in return for my honest review.

An experienced hiker has gone missing on the Appalachian Trail. This novel is told from multiple viewpoints, which makes for an interesting read. We hear the hiker, Valerie's POV, Lt. Bev, and Lena, an air chair detective. Through these POV's we wonder if Valerie got lost, her husband did something to her(she was supposed to meet him at a checkpoint and he reported her missing), or if something more sinister is in the works. Lena hears all kinds of theories from online communities she is a part of. Many things have happened or are suspected of happening on the Appalachian Trail, especially to those hiking alone.

This was a much quieter novel than I anticipated from the synopsis. We have 3 POVs that intersect to differing degrees. I kept waiting for the smoking gun and it never came. At its core, this is a book about mother daughter relationships. The missing woman felt very much so like an afterthought. Lt Bev was my favorite character of the three. She was unwavering and strong. Lena seems like she belonged in a completely different book, albeit one I would definitely read. The string that ties her to the missing woman was definitely intriguing but felt a little disjointed to me.

Valerie Gillis, a 42-year old woman, goes missing while she hikes the Appalachian Trail. As the mystery unfolds we get to know her husband, the other hikers, family members, and the steadfast Maine State Game Wardens that coordinate search efforts. The vast wilderness is one of the main characters in this novel. What happened to Valerie, is she lost, injured or worse? Will they find her in time?

**A big thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an electronic ARC and the opportunity to review this book.

Valerie Gillis, a 42 year old nurse needed to get away from life's pressures for a while and recharge. Her method of doing that was to walk the Appalachian Trail. Now I'm not sure that would be my chosen way to get away from it all and recharge, but Valerie jumped into it and did wonderfully well. She began in the midpoint and undertook the northern half of the trail for her first challenge. Along the way she struck up acquaintances with a number of other hikers, but along the way something happened and in the heart of the Maine forest, only a relatively short distance from the trail's terminus at Mount Katahdin and she disappeared. Somehow she got off the trail, was injured, and lost. The book is about the search for Valerie and the tale is a gripping one.

There are three threads in the book. Valerie's story comes in the form of letters to here mother that she writes in her journal. Through that we learn a lot about Valerie and her experience on the trail. Beverly is a Maine State Game Warden who is charged with coordinating the search and rescue efforts. Then there is a 76 year old woman named Lana who lives in a senior home in Connecticut, but know enough about the internet and the issues involved in a search and rescue effort to initiate her own search from her home.

Of course there are also a plethora of false leads from hacks, quacks, and not-very-helpful hikers who add their two cents worth. Most of these entries I found tedious and obviously not significant to the main thread but they do give a feel for the type of thing that real search parties have to deal with.

HEARTWOOD is a carefully crafted and elegantly written book that reads like something out of real life. I appreciated the opportunity provided me by NetGalley and the book's publisher to read and give and honest review to this book.

Thank you @simonandschuster and #netgalley for the e-ARC.

This one came out on 4/1, but I was deep in a cozy mystery mood and so I just got to it last week. Also it’s a Read with Jenna pick, if you care about that. I only care because then great books get more publicity. But I don’t make my reading selections based on that.

This is about Valerie, a novice hiker who gets lost while hiking the Appalachian Trail. There are multiple points of view. Valerie’s is through letters to her mother, about her struggle with the elements and her fight to stay alive. Another is Beverly, a Maine State Game Warden, who leads the investigation. The third is Lena, a seventy-six year old woman who lives in a retirement community and who becomes a bit obsessed with Valerie’s disappearance. There is also a man that hiked part of the trail with Valerie, and may be the last person who saw her before she disappeared.

Despite the free e-ARC, I listened to this on audio. The audiobook is done well. Each character is represented by a different narrator (so, full cast).

Overall, I enjoyed it. It’s a slower burn mystery and I did find myself wanting a faster pace. With so many characters I felt like the story strayed often from the Valerie disappearance. The author had many stories to tell and I feel like there wasn’t enough time to flesh out each character.

On the flip side, it was pretty apparent what happened. I kept waiting for some kind of twist, but I think the author wants you to know what happened. It allows for more storytelling around the characters.

I enjoy hiking and so I loved the nature aspect.

Overall, a good read.

I really enjoyed this literary mystery. There was a good balance between character development, setting, and the central mystery. The parts from Lena's perspective were my least favorite but I did like how everything tied in at the end. I would definitely recommend this, especially for people who liked God of the Woods.

A young woman, a nurse sets off to hike the Appalachian Trail but somewhere in Maine she gets lost. The story is told with her entries in her journal, from Bev, the female warden in charge of the search and Lena, a disabled woman who is estranged from her daughter. But Lena through an online connection sends Bev to the spot where the woman is. It takes 14 days before they have the coordinates from Lena’s online friend, but she is found alive.

The story is interesting but because it jumps around to different POV's it can become confusing.

A search for a missing person and all those that it affects. It's crazy how one lost person can cause so much pain for the rest of those left behind, but mostly a terrible way to live with yourself with no one around. Talk about solitary confinement. Totally loved this mystery and all of the characters (with an emphasis on character). Do we love who we love because we have to or is there more to our love?

This book will hold you in its grip until you've read every last word, and it is WORTH IT. Such an engaging, layered story, told through the points of view of three characters whose connections will become clear by the last page. I have not stopped thinking about this book since I finished it, and I cannot wait to read more from this author.