Overview

Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search-and-rescue team race against time when 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 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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9781668111468

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Reviews

""A terrifically moving and tense thriller."" -- ""Washington Post"" ""The best thriller of 2025."" -- ""Boston Globe"" ""Eerie and beautiful and fascinating--a book about survival against every existential threat, about connection despite every force tearing us asunder."" -- ""Catherine Newman, author of Sandwich""

""Eerie and beautiful and fascinating--a book about survival against every existential threat, about connection despite every force tearing us asunder."" -- ""Catherine Newman, author of Sandwich""

Author Information

Heartwood is Amity Gaige's fifth novel. It was selected by Jenna Bush Hager as a Read with Jenna pick for April 2025 and became an instant national bestseller. Amity is the author of four previous novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife. Sea Wife was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Mark Twain American Voice Award. Schroder was also a New York Times Notable Book and a best book of 2013 according to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, among others, and was shortlisted for UK's Folio Prize in 2014. In 2018, Amity was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her family and teaches creative writing at Yale. Alma Cuervo is an Earphones Award-winning narrator and a stage actress and singer who has also performed in film and television. She holds an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama, from which she graduated in 1976 alongside Meryl Streep. She starred in the role of Madame Morrible in the first national tour of Wicked. Rebecca Lowman is an actress and audiobook narrator who has won numerous Earphones Awards. She has starred in numerous television shows, including Law & Order, Big Love, NCIS, and Grey's Anatomy, among many others. She earned her MFA from Columbia University. Cary Hite is an experienced actor and audiobook narrator who has had the pleasure of working with a number of publishing houses. An Earphones award-winner, he currently resides in New York City. Helen Laser is an award-winning NYC-based voice actor and artist. Helen narrates for Audible, Penguin Random House, Tantor, and Hachette, and is the voice of Annie's Homegrown. She has appeared on television, in award-winning films that have graced the festival circuit worldwide, and in various stage performances. She is a member of SAG-AFTRA, a published writer, an appreciator of all things spooky, and likes to paint and play various instruments, including auto-harp, accordion, ukulele, and clarinet.

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