Heartwood (a Read with Jenna Pick)
by Amity Gaige
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"The best thriller of 2025." --The Boston Globe * "Genius." --The Washington Post
"A literary thriller of the highest order" (Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Couple), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time after a woman mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail.
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.
At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie's disappearance may not be accidental.
Heartwood is a "gem of a thousand facets--suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending," (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning) that tells the story of a lost hiker's odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character's interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is an "unputdownable" (Real Simple) and redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.
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Book Details
ISBN:
9781668063606
EAN:
1668063603
Binding:
Hardcover
Pages:
320
Authors:
Amity Gaige
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster

SPOILERS:I know the author wants us to find the direct object of the book to be relatable and sweet, but to me, a hiker transplanted to Maine, there is no way that the hiker made it that far without someone teaching her how to build a fire. I did a 3-mile day hike on the AT in Maine this week (June ‘25) and met three thru-hikers, one hopeless, one very young, and one grizzled veteran, who was exceedingly nice. Hikers take care of each other. She would have been making one-match fires on her first overnight. I enjoyed the book, but I wish the hiker was a more believable character. Who ditches her beacon? Even people who cut off the handles of their toothbrushes would ditch their toothpaste before their beacons. Sheesh.
But this was such a wonderful wonderful book. In every possible way. Thrilling and emotional and poetic and just really gorgeous. One of the best books I’ve read in a long time.
As a person who grew up in central Massachusetts and who has spent every summer of her life in Maine this was a particularly personal novel for me. Incredibly beautifully well written wtoith a great grasp of deep emotion. I highly recommend it.
With some literary qualities and discussions of nature and science to boot.A thoughtful, well-written thriller that’s fast paced and fast to read.
Everything about Heartwood is heart. Heartwarming, heart gripping, heart pounding. Heartbreaking. the alternating stories of the lost hiker and the seasoned but self-doubting warden who directs the search, and, surprise, the elderly resident of a retirement home who assists through the Internet, weave around the other fragments - tips, fears, false starts - sad pasts, forgiveness - to make a beautiful story celebrating nature and warning of its mysterious ways. I couldn't put it down.
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