Photo by Jane Shauck

In the heart of the Maine Woods, forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis has vanished two hundred 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 hope alive.

In charge of the investigation is Beverly Miller, 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. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.

"A riveting wilderness suspense novel by a novelist at the height of her powers” (Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Candy House), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time.

Amity Gaige is the author of four previous novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife. Sea Wife was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Mark Twain American Voice Award. Schroder was also a New York Times Notable Book and a best book of 2013 according to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, among others, and was shortlisted for UK’s Folio Prize in 2014. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages. In 2018, Amity was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her family and teaches creative writing at Yale.