Heartwood (A Read with Jenna Pick): A Novel
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 a redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.
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Community Reviews
Heartwood is a wilderness suspense novel that will make you think about life, love, and relationships. Valerie Gillis, a forty-two-year-old nurse, is hiking the Appalachian Trail and vanishes almost 200 miles from her final goal. She has her journal with her and writes letters to her mother while she waits for help. Beverly is the Maine State Game Warden in charge of finding Valerie. She is tough as nails and will not give up the search until Valerie is found. Another character central to the story is Lena, a seventy-six-year-old bird watcher who lives in a retirement community in Connecticut. Lena becomes an unlikely internet sleuth for Valerie. Will they find Valerie in time?
The heart of this story is the mother-daughter relationship. The author weaves the stories in and out beautifully. I love the letters Valerie wrote to her mother. I can’t say more without giving anything away. Sometimes the pace lagged a little for me and I wished it had been a little faster. I appreciated the detail on trails, hiking, and search and rescue procedures. I loved the idea behind the name Heartwood. This is a special book and I look forward to reading more from this author. Thank you to Simon & Schuster for providing this book for review consideration via Net Galley. All opinions are my own.
The heart of this story is the mother-daughter relationship. The author weaves the stories in and out beautifully. I love the letters Valerie wrote to her mother. I can’t say more without giving anything away. Sometimes the pace lagged a little for me and I wished it had been a little faster. I appreciated the detail on trails, hiking, and search and rescue procedures. I loved the idea behind the name Heartwood. This is a special book and I look forward to reading more from this author. Thank you to Simon & Schuster for providing this book for review consideration via Net Galley. All opinions are my own.
Sparrow
Oh my gods. The ending of this book just gutted me. But in a good cathartic way. This is about a woman who gets lost while hiking the Appalachian Trail. But it’s about so much more. The story is told from several perspectives and that back and forth gives it such a propulsive energy. The descriptions of the trail, the hikers, the environs, the search, the searchers, the family, shows how much more complicated the Appalachian Trail actually is and how unprepared most of us are to be out in raw nature.
Oh my gods. The ending of this book just gutted me. But in a good cathartic way. This is about a woman who gets lost while hiking the Appalachian Trail. But it’s about so much more. The story is told from several perspectives and that back and forth gives it such a propulsive energy. The descriptions of the trail, the hikers, the environs, the search, the searchers, the family, shows how much more complicated the Appalachian Trail actually is and how unprepared most of us are to be out in raw nature.
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