Part of my ongoing series Reading as a Writer to study what resonates with me as a reader and what craft tips I learned as a writer—and how debut authors like me can hopefully position their work for book club success!

The Premise

I'm not typically drawn to mystery/crime/missing-person thrillers—the genre just doesn't call to me the way book club/literary fiction does—but in my quest to read through the complete Read with Jenna catalogue, I picked up Heartwood by Amity Gaige (buy here) discovered something surprising: I actually love these books! Of course, like most of the world, I was completely absorbed by The God of the Woods by Liz Moore and found Heartwood very similar.

The Premise: When a 42-year-old nurse named Valerie vanishes from the Appalachian Trail—only 200 miles from completing her thru-hike—it's up to other women to crack the case.

Genre: Literary Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

Picked By: Read With Jenna April 2025

Craft Spotlight: What Writers Can Learn

Multiple POVs Create Momentum and Depth

Gaige employs three primary points of view, each belonging to strong, 40+ women whose lives become intertwined through Valerie's disappearance.

Beverly (told in first person, present-tense), the tough-as-nails State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie. Her sections crackle with authority and frustration as she navigates bureaucracy, inter-agency politics, and the ticking clock of a search-and-rescue operation. She's no-nonsense—a woman who's learned to survive in a male-dominated field by being better and tougher than everyone else. But Gaige also reveals the cracks in her armor, particularly as she grapples with her mother's declining health.
Valerie (told in first person, present-tense), the missing hiker who must survive in the wilderness. Her sections are the most lyrical and introspective, full of the kind of nature writing that made me feel like I was there in the forest with her. We see her struggle not just against the elements but against her own mind and body.
Lena (told in third-person, present-tense), a 76-year-old woman living in a senior community who has struck up an online friendship with a forager who goes by the username TerribleSilence. When his messages turn increasingly paranoid and disturbing, she becomes convinced something terrible has happened. Lena's sections explore loneliness, aging, and the surprising ways people connect in the digital age.

There's also Reuben, Valerie's African-American male hiker friend, whose first-person testimony is delivered entirely in transcript form—interview excerpts from the investigation. We're reading his account through the filter of official questioning, and we have to decide for ourselves what's true, what's omitted, and what might be self-serving.

What struck me most as a writer is how Gaige uses these multiple perspectives not just to build suspense (though they absolutely do that), but to examine the same events and themes from radically different angles. Each woman is searching for something—Valerie for survival and self-knowledge, Beverly for answers and competence, Lena for connection and purpose.

Structure: Mixed Media as Narrative Strategy

Gaige varies the form of storytelling throughout. Between the anchors of Beverly and Lena's point-of-view chapters, she inserts transcripts of interviews and tip lines, police bulletins, and letters. Valerie's sections are written as letters to her mother, and Lena's sections have transcripts of messages between her and her online friend.

This mixed-media approach kept me constantly engaged and reminded me how structure itself can be a storytelling tool. It allows the author to control information flow carefully—we only know what each character chooses to reveal, and as a reader trying to solve the mystery, the interstitials help us read between the lines. It also creates texture and rhythm in a novel.

Strong Sense of Setting: Nature Writing That Actually Works

While I've "hiked" the Appalachian Trail—and by that I mean I walked maybe two miles through the Shenandoahs with my dog when I lived in DC—I have no clue what actual trail culture is like or what it takes to complete a thru-hike. Reading Gaige's descriptions of the physical and mental toll—the blisters, the hunger, the bone-deep exhaustion, the strange intimacy of trail life—made me deeply grateful I never felt inclined to be that kind of adventurous.

*Gratuitous photo of my first dog, Charlie, on a hike in Virginia and most possibly nowhere near the Appalachian Trail.*

The trail is where people go to test themselves, to escape, to find something they've lost. The friendships forged in that crucible feel earned and real. The man-versus-nature struggle is rendered without romanticism—it's hard, it's dangerous, and it can kill you. Yet there's something undeniably inspirational about watching Valerie push forward, about seeing her resourcefulness and determination, even as everything falls apart.

As a writer, I'm studying how Gaige balances technical accuracy (she clearly did her research on thru-hiking, wilderness survival, and search-and-rescue operations) with emotional truth. The details matter, but they never overwhelm the story. The landscape is a character, but it never overshadows the humans struggling within it.

Themes: What This Book Is Really About

The mother-daughter relationship runs through every storyline. Mothers are compared to heartwood, and there is much in the novel about mothers being hard on themselves, and about children being disappointed with their mothers.

For example, Valerie writes letters to her mother throughout her hike, trying to explain why she left, what she's searching for, whether they can ever understand each other. When Valerie goes missing, her mother joins the field search, which creates a heartbreaking parallel.

Meanwhile, Lena is estranged from her own daughter, and that absence haunts her sections. Her online friendship with TerribleSilence becomes a kind of surrogate relationship, which makes his growing paranoia all the more alarming to her.

Beverly's mother is dying, and she's navigating the impossible balance of leading a search operation while watching the oft-disappointing woman who raised her slip away. The role reversal—the daughter now caring for the mother—adds another dimension to the novel's exploration of these bonds.

Even Reuben's story touches on parent-child relationships. His father died of COVID, and that loss shaped his decision to hike the trail.

Final Thoughts

Heartwood surprised me in the best way. It's a thriller that delivers on suspense and mystery, but it's also a deeply literary exploration of women's lives, choices, and relationships. If you're looking for a book that will keep you turning pages while also making you think about the big questions—about motherhood, identity, survival, and what we're all searching for—pick this one up.

What Book Club-picks have you recently read and enjoyed? Please share in the comments!

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Heartwood by Amity Gaige: Book Review & Craft Tips