I’ve had Heartwood by Amity Gaige on my list of books to read as soon as I heard about it. I’ve hiked a bit of the Appalachian Trail – roughly 300 miles – and love reading about it, particularly memoirs of women hikers, as well as fictional stories (my favourite Stephen King book is his novella The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon). I would have bought Heartwood except for that pesky celebrity book club marker on the cover (ugh!) so I borrowed it from the library instead. A suspenseful novel about a hiker who goes missing on the AT in Maine, this book featured two great female characters – the hiker, a nurse, and the veteran game warden in charge of her search – and some tense, terrifying scenes. In reading the afterword, I discovered that the real life tragedy of Geraldine Largay’s disappearance and death, and the non-fiction book about it, When You Find My Body, by D. Dauphinee, helped inspire the novel. I immediately borrowed an e-book edition from my library, and blazed through it. I felt such empathy for Gerry and her family, and could absolutely envision the events that led up to her becoming fatally lost on the AT. It’s definitely made me think I need to brush up on my navigational and survival skills before going back out onto the trail. Both books complemented one another, and I’m glad I read them paired together.