Heartwood

Heartwood (2025) is a best-selling novel by American author Amity Gaige. Combining elements of a literary thriller and a police procedural, it follows Maine state game warden Lieutenant Bev Miller as she leads a search-and-rescue operation for missing hiker Valerie Gillis. Set on and around the Appalachian Trail, Heartwood pays homage to the tradition of thru-hiking and explores the connection between solitude, the wilderness, and self-reflection, exploring Nature as Both Sanctuary and Adversary. Through its cast of complex female characters, each of whom struggles in some way with fraught family dynamics, the novel also develops themes of The Deep Roots of Resilience and Survival and The Complexity of Mother-Daughter Bonds.

Gaige is known for in-depth characterization and narratives that explore complex familial relationships. Her previous novel, The Sea Wife (2020), details one family’s eventful sailing voyage and shares with Heartwood both a close-up look at the microworld of the family and an interest in the character-building nature of difficult journeys.

This guide refers to the 2025 hardcover edition published by Simon and Schuster.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, death, child death, racism, gender discrimination, bullying, mental illness, suicidal ideation, addiction, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

A woman named Valerie Gillis has just gone missing while hiking on the Appalachian Trail, and Maine state game warden Lieutenant Bev Miller has been tasked with leading the search-and-rescue operation. Bev is an experienced officer and one of the few female game wardens in the state. After a long career spent having to work harder than her male counterparts to prove her worth, Bev is well situated to oversee a complex, multi-agency mission. She and her team begin searching the vast wilderness surrounding the section of the Appalachian Trail where Valerie was last seen while conducting interviews with several of Valerie’s trail mates. One, a hiker named Ruben who uses the trail name “Santo,” spent a great deal of time hiking with Valerie and provides as much information as possible. It quickly becomes evident that Valerie, a nurse, was kind and well-liked by friends, family, and her trail companions.

In an assisted-living community several hours from the search area, a resident named Lena Kucharski hears about Valerie’s disappearance and wonders if the missing hiker is her estranged daughter, Christine. Even after she learns Valerie’s name and realizes that she is not her daughter, the search captivates her, and she follows the story in the media. Lena has a brilliant scientific mind and is an avid forager. Although introverted and not particularly social, Lena has one close friend, Warren, in her community and another online: a forager who uses the handle “TerribleSilence.” He, too, has been following Valerie’s case and is sure that her disappearance has something to do with a top-secret military training facility located near the search area.

As the search continues, volunteers pour in. Foul play has not yet been ruled out, and the team interviews everyone who was close to Valerie, including her husband, Gregory Bouras, whose hostile behavior makes him an early suspect. The search team has a few promising leads, but they don’t pan out, and the days begin to tick by. Bev, who is a driven, work-oriented officer, throws herself entirely into the case, taking little time off to eat or sleep. She ignores her sisters’ repeated calls about their mother’s declining health and loses all semblance of a personal life.

Lena continues to follow the case from afar, ruminating as she does on her strained relationship with her daughter. Neither Lena nor her husband was truly prepared for parenting, and their marriage was not able to withstand the strain of having a child. After they divorced, Lena was left with Christine. The two didn’t get along, and Christine moved out as soon as she turned 18, got married, and eventually cut off contact with Lena.

As the search drags on, TerribleSilence becomes increasingly agitated, ranting about the American military-industrial complex and the corrupting nature of organized society. When he tells Lena that someone from the military training facility may be responsible for Valerie’s disappearance, and that he went there himself to search for her but was escorted away, Lena agrees with him that the facility should be investigated.

As the search unfolds, Valerie begins to tell her own story through a series of journal entries that she writes to her mother on her trek. In these entries, she describes encountering a strange young man on the trail who adamantly insisted that they were not safe and urged her to follow him. Against her better judgment, Valerie complied. The young man, who introduced himself as Daniel, then removed Valerie’s pack and threw it into the forest before abducting her, claiming that the government was using her pack to track them both and that she would be safer with him. Over the course of several days, it became apparent to Valerie that Daniel was experiencing a mental health crisis. Daniel eventually retrieved Valerie’s pack but left her alone in the woods. Now, she wanders, hungry and increasingly disoriented.

The search continues without success, and Bev fears that her supervisor will soon be forced to call it off. Lena is still following media reports of Valerie’s disappearance, and she has not heard from TerribleSilence in days. Out of the blue, she receives a new message—not from him but from a woman claiming to be his mother. From her, Lena learns that TerribleSilence is actually a 21-year-old man named Daniel Means who has a mental health condition. He is currently in a psychiatric facility, and his mother requests that Lena not contact him again. Lena is now even more suspicious that Daniel was involved in Valerie’s disappearance, and she pores over their chat history. She realizes that Daniel has Valerie’s bandana and decides that she must inform the authorities.

Based on Valerie’s tip, the search team finds and interviews Daniel. He admits to having kidnapped Valerie and informs them where he left her. With that new data point, the team expands its search area and locates a dehydrated, starving Valerie. Bev is ecstatic that Valerie has been found alive but realizes that she is done with search and rescue. She has the opportunity to reconnect with her sisters and explore a new career path, and she would like to take it: She is ready to retire. Valerie recovers, feeling that her hike, although traumatic, was a life-changing experience, and sends her hiking journal to Bev.