Keep Calm and Read On: Lost and Found
By Wayne Limberg
When it comes to thrillers, a place can often be a character all itself, be it the Orient Express or Hill House. In Amity Gaige's "Heartwood," that place is the Appalachian Trail in Maine. Maine has always held a special place in AT history. Myron Avery hailed from Maine and spent as much time there as any other section of the AT. It took the longest to build. At one point, Avery even considered abandoning the effort and ending the AT at Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. It is a place where even experienced hikers get lost if they are foolish enough to leave the trail.
Gaige teaches creative writing at Yale and in 2018 won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. Her four previous books have been NYTimes and Washington Post Notable Books of year and finalists in the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. "Heartwood" is a compelling page-turner loosely based on the disappearance of AT thru-hiker Geraldine Largay in northwest Maine in 2013. The Maine Warden Service launched a multi-week search, which grabbed headlines but failed to find Largay. Her remains ultimately surfaced in 2015. She apparently had survived for a month before dying of exposure.
On one level, "Heartwood" is a cautionary tale of how not to get lost and what to do if you do. As the back stories of the book's three main characters emerge, however, it becomes clear that Gaige is really telling the story of three mothers and daughters.
"Heartland" opens with a passage from thru-hiker Valerie Gillis' journal. It is a note to her mother recalling her childhood and their close bond. Perhaps too close. It quickly becomes clear that Valerie is lost. She had already logged over 900 miles on the AT as part of a flip-flop thru-hike that started in Virginia. In her journal, she claims that no one hikes the AT because they are happy. Valerie is seeking to escape four grueling years as a nurse during the covid pandemic. By the time she reaches Maine, she has come to realize that her marriage is not working and she tells her husband, who has been supporting her hike, that she wants out. When she fails to rendezvous with him at the end of the 100 Mile Wilderness, he reports her missing.
The Maine Warden Service immediately launches a search headed by Lt. Bev. Lt. Bev was the second woman to become a warden and has scores of successful missing-persons searches to her credit. False leads and bad weather frustrate her and her crews' efforts, and she begins to doubt they will find Valerie. She refuses to give up, however, even when she learns her mother is dying. Bev’s father had died when she was a teenager and her mother took to pills, leaving Bev in charge of two younger sisters. A tall and socially awkward girl, she often felt as an outsider. After college she applied to the warden service much to her mother's dismay. As a woman and a non-Mainer, she once again felt like an outsider but her brains, leadership abilities and hard work won her respect and promotions. Her mother's approaching end of life and Bev’s nearing retirement have opened old wounds. The last thing she needs is a failed search and rescue.
The search for Valerie becomes a media circus and soon catches the attention of Lena, a retired scientist living in a retirement community. Lena fears that the missing hiker might be her estranged daughter, Christine, whom she raised alone after her husband left. She always saw the girl as something of an experiment. At 18 Christine became pregnant and married a man whom Lena thought beneath her. The marriage lasted longer than Lena predicted but eventually her daughter was left to raise a son whom Lena has never seen. Lena soon learns that Christine is not the missing hiker but begins discussing the search with a man she has met online. The man's paranoia and belief in deep state conspiracies takes Lena down paths as dark as any Valerie is experiencing in the Maine woods.
Gaige’s deftly builds suspense, alternating between the three women. Key is her use of various voices, ranging from Valerie’s increasingly desperate first-person accounts of her physical and mental decline to at times humorous transcripts of interviews with her trail partner Santo. The descriptions of Lena’s retirement home are refreshing departures from the all-too-common waiting-to-die warehouses or sexual playgrounds for the elderly. Valerie’s naivete can at times be irritating but certainly explains her actions. Some further character development, especially in the case of Valerie’s husband would have been welcome. Most readers will probably anticipate how the search for Valerie ends, but that is not the end of the story as “Heartwood” is a tale of three women dealing with devils past and present.
Do you have a good read? If so, send it to wplimberg@aol.com. Meanwhile, keep reading. See you on the trails.
