Newton Denman, an updated Natty Bumppo, an intelligent if impulsive woodsman is on the run from a crime he may or may not have committed when he spots Callie Major swimming in a mountain pool. They have not laid eyes on one another since the disaster that tore them apart twenty years ago. Callie, half-Irish and half-Seneca, is a forest ranger who is somewhat absentminded and given to a state of what she terms as near hibernation. Though she is loath to trust Newton, the two are drawn to one another. Newton, however, does not know that Callie is protecting a mysterious bear in the forest or that she is guarding another highly personal secret. As for Callie, she has no idea that Newton is hunting this same, possibly supernatural black bear who is legend in the area, or that he is on the run from a charge of arson and homicide in their hometown. The Tracking Heart is a suspense that is also a hymn to nature. Novelist David Maine writes that in this "backdrop of Pennsylvania's mountain wilderness" is "a love story that manages to be both contemporary and timeless." Margot Livesey, bestselling New York Times author states that The Tracking Heart is a "morally complex and a deeply suspenseful novel."