If you've never read a book by Amitiy Gaige, I predict that once you do you'll want to read all of them. I started with SCHROEDER and now HEARTWOOD. I intend to read the rest.

In HEARTWOOD, Gaige tells the story of the search for a lost hiker on the Appalachian Trail through logs of a game warden, Lieutenant Beverly; letters of the lost hiker, "Sparrow," to her mother; interviews with "Sparrow's" fellow hiker "Santo"; another interview with "Sparrow's" husband Gregory; and the almost daily online communications between Lena, an elderly woman living in an independent-living facility, and a man who Lena thinks is a friend and an expert forager and camper. My favorite parts were "Sparrow's" letters, but both she and Lieutenant Bev are main characters. Gaige describes these two characters' thoughts as the search continues.

The search goes on far longer than Lieutenant Bev expects it to. So it becomes quite large as she realizes that the chances of finding "Sparrow" alive are becoming fewer and fewer. All the while you will suspect that Gregory or "Santo" is somehow responsible for "Sparrow's" disappearance. And you will wonder what Lena has to do with this story.

As time goes on and Lieutenant Bev finds it more and more difficult to relate news to "Sparrow's" parents,"Sparrow's" life is leaving her body. The story becomes so tense that I read it in bed at night until the book fell from my hands when I couldn't put off sleep anymore.

The publisher gave me an advance copy of HEARTWOOD at my request through bookreporter.com.