Valerie, a 42-year-old nurse, burnt out by round-the-clock care for dying Covid patients during the height of the epidemic, decides to hike the Appalachian Trail. Two hundred miles from her destination in Maine, she disappears. Bev Miller, a Lieutenant in the Fish and Wildlife service is in charge of search and rescue operations. Far away, at a computer in Connecticut, a 76-year-old forager living in a wheelchair in a retirement home, sits at her computer and ponders the lost Valerie, who is now regionally important news.
The hunt for Valerie is gripping. Our hearts palpitate as the story’s perspective switches among the three women–all of whom are Lake Woebegone strong; the men not-so-much–and we desperately hope that Bev and her crew can locate the lost woman before it is too late and Maine’s north woods swallow her up. After the story wraps, not a lot sticks, except perhaps a desire to get outside and do some hiking.