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 an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
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 an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
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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Community Reviews
“Listen, no one hikes two thousand miles because they’re happy. Even the most cheerful or uncomplaining hikers aren’t “happy.” You’ve got to have a significant fire under you to slog through over two thousand miles of jagged rocks, rain, and snakes. You’ve got to have a deep, unshakable point to prove.”
Heartwood is a moving and suspenseful story about Appalachian Trail hiker Sparrow who vanishes in the worst stretch of the AT—the dense Maine woods near the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. It is also a story about relationships, mostly those between children and their parents.
Told from various points of view, this book brings Sparrow into focus as well as her mother and those who help with the search. Through Warden interviews with her hiking partner Santo, we learn much about Sparrow, life on the trail and, most endearing, about Santo and his difficult relationship with his father. “Me hiking the AT seemed like craziness to everyone around me, but it was just me trying to treat my own life as valuable.” Then there is Lena, a wheelchair-bound senior who initially thinks the lost hiker is her estranged daughter, connecting her to the case in a manner that forces her to explore her past.
At the center of the search is Bev, the Maine State Game Warden, who has been in the business of finding lost people for thirty years, she says, and has a stellar record. As days seem to meld one into the other with thousands of acres covered and no sign of Sparrow, Bev contemplates her long career, the trail-blazing role as the first female Maine Game Warden, and the challenges she faced from male colleagues and her mother.
This wonderful book will appeal to a wide audience from outdoor enthusiasts to bookclub groups.
“I would press my hand against your chest so that I could feel the center of you—your heartwood, your innermost substance, like the core of a tree that keeps it standing.” —Sparrow writing to her Mother from somewhere in the Maine woods
This story pulled me in from the first page. Valerie Gillis, a nurse, decides to do the Appalachian Trail. Before she gets to the end, she dissappears in the woods of Maine. Valerie's journal entries, trail partner's interviews, as well as the perspective of the game warden, Lt Beverly Miller, make for interesting reading. It is a page turner.
Don’t be swayed by the zealous reviews. While I found the story compelling and the twist intriguing, the overall narrative felt lacking. At times, I found myself skimming rather than savoring the prose. The characters were relatively uninteresting—unsympathetic, uninspiring, and in some cases, underdeveloped.
The suspension of disbelief required was higher than expected, and the character of Santos felt haltingly and awkwardly integrated into the storyline. What truly unsettled me, however, was learning that a significant portion of the plot closely mirrors a real-life tragedy. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be the surviving husband or daughter of the nurse hiker who died of exposure on the Appalachian Trail.
This raises ethical questions, and it reinforces a sense that the publishing industry often prioritizes profit over the depth and integrity of storytelling. I would not recommend this book to others—and I certainly wouldn't gift it.
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