Just a few days away from completing the Appalachian Trail, through-hiker Valerie Gillis has gone missing. Beverly, a Maine State Game Warden with an impeccable track record for finding missing persons, is lead on the case. She knows that the first few days after someone goes missing are the most crucial, and so she coordinates search parties, aerial surveillance, and scent dogs in a race against time to find Valerie alive. Valerie is well and truly lost in the Maine woods, and we learn about her and what brought her to this point via the letters she writes to her mother; letters she writes to both keep her sane and leave a record of her final days, should worse come to worst. In a senior living community one state over, devoted forager and birdwatcher Lena learns of the missing persons case and becomes an armchair detective as she works with her online friends from the foraging community to try to figure out what could have happened to Valerie.
Heartwood is the definition of a slow burn. Valerie takes her time getting to how she wound up lost in the woods. She ruminates on her relationship with her mother, her experiences on the Appalachian Trail, her burnout from being a nurse during the height of COVID, and what inspired her to hike the AT in the first place. Lena’s chapters discuss foraging, her prickly relationships with the other members of her senior community, and the deterioration of her relationship with her now-estranged daughter. But hers are also the chapters where a sense of mystery really starts to build up. Her online friend is just as invested in the missing persons case as she is. In her friend’s case, he believes he’s uncovered something that Valerie may have stumbled into herself; something so top-secret that the government might do anything to keep its existence under wraps. But it’s Beverly’s chapters that are the driving force behind the story. It’s through her that we learn of all the different tactics used to locate people missing in the deep woods, along with how and when those tactics can best be employed. Beverly is the one who deals with Valerie’s husband and parents, trying to keep their spirits up as the search for their wife and daughter drags on. But even Beverly digresses often, thinking about her path as she came up the ranks in the game wardens, and about her complicated relationship with her mother, whose health is now deteriorating.
This is a book that is a mystery, but also a rumination on the relationships between mothers and daughters, and how they impact both. It will make you want to go for a hike in the woods (though maybe a bit closer to home than the deep woods of Maine) and hug your loved ones close. It is beautifully written, and while I have some complaints (holy learned helplessness Valerie!) I still really enjoyed this book.