What would you do if you were lost on the Appalachian Trail? For most of us, the question is, thankfully, a hypothetical.
But for the main character in Amity Gaige’s “Heartwood,” Jenna’s April 2025 Read With Jenna pick, the question is urgent and very real.
In the novel, Valerie Gillis, a 42-year-old hiker, becomes lost somewhere in the wilds of Maine. Lost and losing energy, she composes letters to her mother in her head.
The book also tracks two women who are obsessed with Valerie’s whereabouts: Beverly, a game warden at the Maine Warden Service in charge of the search, and Lena, a loner in a nursing home following the story.
“Heartwood” by Amity Gaige
“All fiction is about trouble. The trouble here was definitely lostness,” author Gaige says in an interview with TODAY.com.
The idea of being lost applies to more than just Valerie’s physical whereabouts, Gaige says.
“We all get emotionally lost and psychologically lost on a daily or yearly basis,” Gaige says. “I felt that I quickly accessed my knowledge of emotional lostness and gave it to my hiker and was able to imagine and research the rest in terms of what she might do.”
As a hiker, Gaige was interested in exploring Appalachian Trail, which she says has “such a culture to it,” for her next novel. Gaige is also the author of novels “O My Darling” (2005), “The Folded World” (2007), “Schroder” (2013), and “Sea Wife” (2020).
About 3 million people visit the trail each year, but only 4,000 attempt to hike the entirety of it, like Valerie does.
To research the book, Gaige did indeed visit the Appalachian Trail and spend an overnight at a “shelter,” or a stopping point on the road, with other hikers.
“They could tell I was a fake. I was way too relaxed,” she laughs. “There’s such an intensity and a focus to the people that make it on the through the trail.”
Gaige was also struck by the story of Geraldine Largay, a retired nurse who disappeared from the trail in 2013. Her remains were found two years later, in 2015. Alongside her body were letters she had written to her family in her journal.
“That was really the spark of the book — the letters. The book is all one letter to her mom,” Gaige says.
In addition to being a survival story, Gaige calls “Heartwood” her “mother-daughter” book because of how many mother-daughter dynamics it contains and explores. In contrast with Valerie and her beloved mother, Beverly and Lena both have complicated feelings they unfurl over the course of the novel.
“The mother is really the most important figure outside oneself, it seems like, for the one’s entire life. Sometimes it’s because she was wonderful, and sometimes it was because she wasn’t and did not give you the love you needed. And so you chase that for the rest of your life,” she says.
Reading the book, Gaige hopes readers ask themselves about times that they were lost and how they managed to find themselves.
"Have you ever been physically lost? How did it feel? Why is it so scary? When have you been emotionally or spiritually lost, and also, who rescued you? There's always somebody. Even in the darkest times, there's somebody who sees you, who steps in," she says.
As for whether she recommends people get out into the woods, even if Valerie encounters danger?
"I totally do," she says. "When have you ever gone out in nature and come home and regretted it?"
Valerie, of course, might answer that question differently.