Heartwood: a novel

A 42-year-old hiker goes missing from the Appalachian Trail in Maine in Gaige's (Sea Wife, 2020) suspenseful, wrenching novel. In July 2022, Valerie has been hiking the trail, starting in Virginia, for three months. A nurse who was devastated by working during the pandemic, she frequently meets up with her husband, Gregory, who follows her by car and refreshes her supplies. When she doesn't show up at a planned meeting place, Gregory reports her missing, and the investigation is taken up by Bev, a thirty-year veteran of the Maine warden's service. Meanwhile, at a retirement community in Connecticut, 76-year-old loner Lena becomes determined to help solve the case. As the days tick on and Valerie's fate looks more dire, Gaige moves between Bev's increasingly desperate attempts at a rescue, Lena's surprising online discoveries, and letters Valerie writes to her mother from the clearing where she has set up her tent. A crackling adventure story, a meditation on the fraught human connection to nature, and a subtle examination of the rocky relationships between mothers and daughters that shape the lives of its three main characters, the novel tightens its grip as it moves toward uncovering its central mysteries.

A woman vanishes near Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness in this uneven literary thriller from Gaige (Sea Wife). At first, Gregory Bouras doesn't worry when his wife, Valerie, fails to meet him at a Maine trailhead for a scheduled resupply during her hike of the Appalachian Trail; she's been walking for three months now and has been routinely waylaid. After 24 hours without word, however, Gregory calls the authorities. Lt. Beverly Miller of the Maine Warden Service has led several dozen successful searches for off-course thru-hikers every year, but when a massive, multiday effort turns up no sign of Valerie, Bev fears the worst. Meanwhile, in a Connecticut retirement community, disabled septuagenarian Lena Kucharski learns of the search from a Mainer she met on a foraging subreddit who believes Valerie stumbled upon a secret military training facility. Gaige interweaves Bev's first-person narration with chapters from Lena's perspective, letters a lost Valerie writes to her mom, and transcripts of hotline tips and recorded interviews with people following the case. The preposterous, unfocused plot disappoints, but multifaceted characters and poetic prose enhance Gaige's tender meditations on aging and mother-daughter relationships. It's a mixed bag. Agent: Kimberly Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (Apr.)

A woman who's disappeared from the Appalachian Trail prompts a frenzy. Gaige's fifth novel concerns the fate of Valerie Gillis, known on the trail as Sparrow, a 42-year-old woman who's vanished somewhere in Maine while hiking a notoriously treacherous stretch. Charged with organizing the search is Beverly Miller, a lieutenant in the Maine Warden Service, and she has plenty of help--a small but committed community of volunteers is ready at a moment's notice to canvass the area. But the clock is ticking: Bev notes that 97% of lost hikers are found in 24 hours, but "the other 3 percent, we know those stories like scripture." Gaige's storytelling alternates between writings in Sparrow's notebooks, chapters from Bev's perspective, transcripts of warden tip-line messages and interviews (most prominently with Ruben Serrano--trail name Santo--a straight-talking, beefy Bronx denizen who befriended Sparrow on the trail), and chapters told from the perspective of Lena Kucharski, a nursing-home resident following the search online. Gaige's novel is at its core a mystery, with plenty of leads for Bev to pursue. (Can Sparrow's husband be trusted? Was Santo overly obsessed with her?) But the novel's strength is in capturing the way one human disappearance prompts a host of emotions--frustration, desperation, fear, and (especially) paranoia. (One throughline in the novel concerns the ways conspiracy-minded locals wonder about the true intentions of a military training school for troops at risk for capture in combat.) This gives Gaige an opportunity to write in a variety of registers, some more convincing than others--Santo's tough-but-sensitive patter feels relatively wooden, but Bev's struggles to continue the search while managing a host of details, as well as misogynist microaggressions, are rich and persuasive. Sparrow herself is a relative mystery, but the emotions she inspires are crystal clear. A winning portrait of a woman, and community, in peril. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* A 42-year-old hiker goes missing from the Appalachian Trail in Maine in Gaige's (Sea Wife, 2020) suspenseful, wrenching novel. In July 2022, Valerie has been hiking the trail, starting in Virginia, for three months. A nurse who was devastated by working during the pandemic, she frequently meets up with her husband, Gregory, who follows her by car and refreshes her supplies. When she doesn't show up at a planned meeting place, Gregory reports her missing, and the investigation is taken up by Bev, a thirty-year veteran of the Maine warden's service. Meanwhile, at a retirement community in Connecticut, 76-year-old loner Lena becomes determined to help solve the case. As the days tick on and Valerie's fate looks more dire, Gaige moves between Bev's increasingly desperate attempts at a rescue, Lena's surprising online discoveries, and letters Valerie writes to her mother from the clearing where she has set up her tent. A crackling adventure story, a meditation on the fraught human connection to nature, and a subtle examination of the rocky relationships between mothers and daughters that shape the lives of its three main characters, the novel tightens its grip as it moves toward uncovering its central mysteries. Copyright 2025 Booklist Reviews.

A woman vanishes near Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness in this uneven literary thriller from Gaige (Sea Wife). At first, Gregory Bouras doesn't worry when his wife, Valerie, fails to meet him at a Maine trailhead for a scheduled resupply during her hike of the Appalachian Trail; she's been walking for three months now and has been routinely waylaid. After 24 hours without word, however, Gregory calls the authorities. Lt. Beverly Miller of the Maine Warden Service has led several dozen successful searches for off-course thru-hikers every year, but when a massive, multiday effort turns up no sign of Valerie, Bev fears the worst. Meanwhile, in a Connecticut retirement community, disabled septuagenarian Lena Kucharski learns of the search from a Mainer she met on a foraging subreddit who believes Valerie stumbled upon a secret military training facility. Gaige interweaves Bev's first-person narration with chapters from Lena's perspective, letters a lost Valerie writes to her mom, and transcripts of hotline tips and recorded interviews with people following the case. The preposterous, unfocused plot disappoints, but multifaceted characters and poetic prose enhance Gaige's tender meditations on aging and mother-daughter relationships. It's a mixed bag. Agent: Kimberly Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (Apr.)