Heartwood (A Read with Jenna Pick)

De: Amity Gaige

Narrado por: Justine Lupe, Alma Cuervo, Rebecca Lowman, Ali Andre Ali, Cary Hite, Helen Laser

A 2026 Audie Award Finalist for Ensemble Performance

“Heartwood will keep you guessing the whole way through. I didn't want it to end.” —Liz Moore

“The best thriller of 2025.” —The Boston Globe * “Genius.” —The Washington Post

“A literary thriller of the highest order” (Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Couple), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time after a woman mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail.

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 “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 an “unputdownable” (Real Simple) and redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.

Lost A.T. Hiker

We learn much about the relationships of mothers and daughters as we follow the travails of a woman who loses her way on the Appalachian Trail.

Narration was outstanding.

Liked the story, points of view, pace. Liked that the ending was different than the actual events it was based on.

Well read by different characters

As a hiker of the AT myself, I found myself drawn into this search for a missing hiker.

Excellent! - already looking for the next book she’s written.

well, written with no sense of pretension, but literary turns a phrase that delight and wave of a perfectly gripping and beautiful story. Already making a list of her other books I’m going to read.

AT story at its best

I Loved the entire novel. from Harpers Ferry, WV. performed beautifully. I will listen to more of her novels.