NEW YORK TIMES • March 30, 2025
At the center of the story in “Heartwood” by Amity Gaige is Valerie Gillis, a nurse who goes missing in Maine during an audacious hike of the Appalachian Trail. Her chapters are presented through “love letters” (scrawled as increasingly desperate journal entries) she writes to her mother to pass the time and stay sane while she’s stranded. Then there’s “Lt. Bev” Miller, a veteran game warden who leads the search for Valerie while silencing calls about her own ailing “Ma.” The most magnetic of the novel’s interconnected trio is Lena Kucharski. She’s a 76-year-old retired scientist who forages for edible flora and fauna, undeterred by her motorized wheelchair or the banality of the retirement community where she lives. Estranged from her daughter, a lonely Lena is free to turn a forensic eye to the Gillis case. The real suspense of “Heartwood” is whether all three women will make it out of their metaphorical woods. ~ Michelle Ruiz