Every year there’s a book that is called “thriller of the year”. Last year it was The God of the Woods, a book I read and liked but wouldn’t have called a thriller. This year Amity Gaige’s novel Heartwood is called by many critics “thriller of the year”, but, like The God of the Woods, Heartwood could be called a mystery but it’s not a thriller. The pace is too leisurely and there isn’t a dramatic finale in which a perpetrator almost kills his victim.

Heartwood is first and foremost a missing person’s story and a story of mother/daughter relationships. The novel is told from three different points of view. The first is the point of view of the missing person Valerie Gillis whom we get to know through letters to her mother and diary entries she writes while fighting for her survival. The second point of view belongs to Lt Bev Miller, the warden in charge of the search and rescue mission. The third and most interesting is Lena Kucharski’s POV. Lena is an elderly woman who lives in an assisted living facility in Connecticut. She used to be a scientist and loves to forage. Not an easy thing to do for someone in a wheelchair. She’s befriended another much younger forager online and spends her time chatting to him or to another inhabitant of the home.

I’m not exactly outdoorsy, so it would never occur to me to undertake one of these major hikes like the Pacific Crest Trail, but I find it interesting to read about them. The missing person of this book, Valerie Gillis, a nurse who is traumatized and burnt out by nursing during Covid, decides to hike the even bigger Appalachian Trail, a massive hike that takes her through 14 states. Once she arrives in Maine, and just before undertaking the final, possibly hardest part, she goes missing.

Game warden, Lt Beverly Miller has the reputation of finding everyone, but this case proves to be beyond tricky. They don’t exactly know where Valerie went off the trail. Since the terrain she might be in is huge, there are hundreds of volunteers, wardens, canine units and pilots who search but to no avail. And they have to assume foul play.

Elderly Lena Kucharski reads about the search online and for weird reasons thinks at first it might be her own daughter who is missing.

At the center of the story lies the search but all three of the separate narratives circle around the relationships between mothers and daughters. The title of the book comes from Valerie who describes her mum as the heartwood (the hard center inside of a tree trunk) of her life – the thing that holds everything together, gives her stability. Lena has not seen her daughter in years because the daughter made choices she didn’t approve of. Lt. Bev’s story is also a story of an intense relationship but in this case the mother was an addict.

During the hike, Valerie befriends a fellow hiker, an obese Dominican American man who feels responsible for her disappearance. He is convinced that if he hadn’t abandoned the trail because he had to go back to New York, she wouldn’t have left the trail and gone missing. Through his conversations and interviews with the warden’s we learn a lot about the rituals and special camaraderie of the trail hikers.

I found Heartwood enjoyable and readable. I was in the mood for something entertaining and after reading a few good reviews, I thought it might be just what I wanted. It didn’t disappoint but it is an odd beast. Not a thriller, only marginally crime and, to be honest, not exactly literary either. But it was entertaining, and I hadn’t read this type of missing person’s story before. We get such a good impression of what it means to be lost and what it means to give everything to try to find someone. When will you decide that the search is over? How long is a missing person able to survive in the wild? There is a resemblance with Lt Bev’s own story because her mother is in hospice care and there will come a moment when she and her sisters will have to decide whether she should be resuscitated or not.

Lena is by far the most interesting character. Stubborn, cranky, she’s like a light version of Olive Kitteridge. Valerie didn’t really have much depth, but Lt. Bev was likeable and her complicated relationship with her mother, very relatable for me.

To answer the question of the title – no Heartwood is not the thriller of the year but if you’re in the mood for a well-paced, nicely told and engaging story with a mystery at its heart – go for it. Just don’t expect an edge-of-your-seat story or anything very literary.