Book Review: ‘Heartwood,’ by Amity Gaige

Fortunately, Bev’s jagged relationship with her mother proves more complex. Even after she became a pioneering female lieutenant, Bev still failed to win approval from her traditional Ma, who considers wardenship unwomanly. (“Do you wish to be a man?” Ma asks in a flashback.) Nonetheless, Bev is married to her job, and she finds fulfillment in her stellar record of finding missing people. “The backcountry is my mother,” she declares. Bev’s an earthy heroine, one whom Gaige imbues with just enough folksiness to be charming. A speech she makes to search volunteers, reminding them that “it’s not always who you’d bet on that makes it,” is especially winning.

The true heartwood of the novel, though, is Lena, an “acquired taste” and total delight in the vein of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. Lena’s senior life is rich with interest, from her virtual friendship with a younger man she meets on a foraging subreddit (they bond over black locust flowers, which he eats “like popcorn”) to her real-life friendship with her fellow retirement-community resident Warren Esterman, who’s clearly in love with her. A scientist to her core, she drives away Christine by treating her like a specimen, but Lena can’t help herself; looking at life through a microscope is her specialty. Lena is one of the novel’s most gripping characters, and fittingly, Gaige gives her one of the more surprising and satisfying arcs of the book.

“Heartwood” absorbs the reader in the subculture and shorthand of “the A.T.,” including “tramily” (trail family), the notion of “hiker midnight” (9 p.m.) and the use of “trail names.” Valerie goes by Sparrow, a childhood nickname from her mother that she reframes during her many lonely hours. “Sparrows are survivors,” she says. Her “trail brother” Ruben Serrano, a.k.a. Santo, a Bronx-bred, self-described “fat” Dominican American man, provides comic relief about the historic whiteness of backpacking. “There’s this moment when they literally don’t understand,” he cracks of fellow hikers. “They’re like, ‘Is that a person of color?’”

As the days pass and hope dwindles, Valerie fears an ominous “he” — could it be Gregory or even the bighearted Santo? Neither is a terribly convincing red herring; the mystery is mostly an afterthought. The real suspense of “Heartwood” is whether all three women will make it out of their metaphorical woods.