Heartwood (A Read with Jenna Pick): A Novel
“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.
“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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Readers say *Heartwood* is a slow-burning, suspenseful story about a solo hiker's disappearance on the Appalachian Trail, with Bev, the strong female ...
This is a very slow burn about a hiker who goes missing on the Appalachian Trail. The AT is a 2200-mile trail in the Eastern US that can take 5-7 months to complete if you hike through. What starts off as a hiker's dream becomes a hiker's nightmare. Valerie Gillis decided to hike this trail solo, goes by the trail name Sparrow. Santo becomes her hiking partner for a good chunk of the trail. The story is told from multiple POV's; Valerie, Beverely, a Maine state game warden in charge of conducting the search and Lena, a 76 year old woman who gets caught up in the search efforts from her retirement home. Valerie's POV is journal entries to her mom (I actually liked these). Bev is a strong female character in a mostly male dominated field. Lena's character seems baffling; how is this 76 year old going to actually help? While I did enjoy the interviews with Santo, they did just seem to provide a male suspect for the case; as did the husband. The three women's stories didn't always seem to weave together to make one thrilling story. It just felt ho-hum. The ending had me saying: oh, ok.
I don't always like to read books by Jenna (or whoever) because it is so subjective. But plenty of people did really like this book so maybe it just wasn't for me.
I don't always like to read books by Jenna (or whoever) because it is so subjective. But plenty of people did really like this book so maybe it just wasn't for me.
We all loved this! We have read many books about people hiking the AT or adjacent to it, and Maine-related, as well.
A story about a woman who gets lost hiking the AT. It takes place in the northern section of the AT in Maine. At times, I really enjoyed the book, and other times I just wasn't connecting with the storyline.
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