Getting lost in the wilderness seems to be an increasingly popular subject in fiction these days, sometimes taking inspiration from real-life events, which is the case with Heartwood, Amity Gaige’s stunning, suspenseful, deeply moving new novel. She acknowledges the “spark” that set the book going -the massive, unsuccessful search in 2013 for a 66-year-old woman who was hiking the northern part of the Appalachian Trail in Maine when she went missing, though the novel is set in July 2022, shortly after the Pandemic.
It’s been 110 years since Robert Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken,” which is referenced in Heartwood. For sure, the last lines of the poem about taking the road “less traveled by” that “has made all the difference” take on significance for the diverse characters in the novel, who don’t know one another, but who by the end, are brought together in a theme of reconciliation that reaches beyond their search for the missing woman, 42-year-old Valerie Gillis. The concept is ingenious, the execution impressive, the imagery original, and the ordinary vocabulary at times rare but apt. When was the last time you used the verb “to cant”?
As the story begins, Valerie is writing to her mother, “You used to call me Sparrow. Why? Because the woods are full of sparrows, and you loved everything outdoors. Songbirds, wildflowers, wind.” And then, that dazzling next sentence: “You could read the weather like a poem.” The letter, though, is not sent because Valerie is writing in a journal all about her love for her mother, and the security she felt as a child and adult, despite deep anxieties for which she takes medication. She writes about the past as a way of keeping calm when she realizes she is dangerously alone. She had wanted the challenge of pushing herself, renewing purpose. As hikers say, “No Maine, no gain” – and so, though married, if not enthusiastically anymore, childless but with a fine reputation as a compassionate nurse, she set out to do the Appalachian Trail. But now she’s lost in the densest part of its 2,100 miles, her devoted trail buddy having left for personal reasons, and her phone inoperable. She’s a nurse. She understands what days without being found mean.
The narrative then switches to Lt. Beverly Miller, the chief Maine State Game Warden, a tall, gangly, middle-aged woman who, as a female, still has to continually prove herself. But she loves her work and is admired for her record in locating and rescuing lost hikers. Other characters are added to the alternating chapter mix - Santos, Valerie’s trail partner, an overweight, kindly Black man from poor circumstances who finds in Valerie a soul mate, as she does in him. And finally, though hardly least, Lena Kucharski, a 76-year-old ornery loner, former scientist living in a Connecticut retirement community. She pushes around in a wheelchair, knowing she’s just a hair’s breadth away from being sent to assisted living. Oddly, she attracts a friend, Warren, who admires her sharp mind and curiosity, and they go foraging together. She, too, however, like the other women, has family problems of the mother-daughter kind.
“Everybody’s got a reason to hike the trail,” Lt. Bev says knowingly. “It’s never because they are well-loved and at peace.” How Gaige integrates these themes into a compelling tale of survival that also involves a secret military facility in the woods is amazing. And a major literary achievement.
