Heartwood

''Heartwood is a true wilderness thriller: a missing person quest rendered in agile, extraordinary prose by a novelist at the height of her powers. I found it nearly impossible to put down'' Jennifer Egan Valerie Gillis, a 42-year-old nurse, is hiking the Appalachian Trail, a legendarily challenging route that runs from Georgia to Maine, taking in fourteen states. She has almost reached the end when she vanishes. Beverly Miller, the first female game warden ever hired in the state of Maine, has a near-perfect record of finding lost people. She is leading a search and rescue mission through the impenetrable woods. Meanwhile, Lena follows the case online from her retirement home, believing she might hold the key to the case. Heartwood is a love letter to mothers, daughters, nurses, first responders, loners, and lovers of nature, and to anyone who''s been lost along the way.

Autorentext

Amity Gaige

Klappentext

A search-and-rescue team races against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears in this gripping and suspenseful new novel from Amity Gaige

In the heart of the Maine woods, forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis has vanished along the Appalachian Trail two hundred miles from her 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 hope alive.

At the center of the investigation into Valerie's disappearance is Beverly, the determined Maine state game warden leading the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena-a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community-becomes an unexpected armchair detective. As the story alternates among these compelling and vivid voices, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search . . . as it appears Valerie's disappearance may not have been accidental.

Heartwood is not only the story of a lost hiker's odyssey but also a powerful ode to mothers and daughters and to the solace of nature. Heartwood is a redemptive novel for our times, inspiring larger questions about the many ways in which we become lost, and how we are found.

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