Every bend hides a story. Every story has a cost.Winter, 1964. Tom Crutchfield arrives in the barren coal fields of western Kentucky searching for the mother who abandoned him twenty-one years ago. A mysterious Christmas card has unsettled the life mapped out for him—a near-complete degree, a secure future at his father's construction firm—and sent him toward the gray Ohio River, where two hunters have gone missing.As Tom digs into the disappearances, he's drawn into a world thick with whispers of murder, corruption, and betrayal. He finds love in a beer shack, temptation beneath the mounted trophies of a vengeful spouse, and uneasy friendship with a landlord in blue slippers carrying a pump-action shotgun. There's a new boss at the local paper, reeking of whiskey and printer's ink, and everyone has something to hide.In unraveling the mystery of the missing men, Tom uncovers the buried truths of his own birth—and must decide whether some secrets are better left in the shadows.Fans of Ron Rash's The Caretaker will feel at home in this atmospheric literary mystery. Or picture Craig Johnson's Sheriff Longmire, not on the Wyoming prairie but in the Ohio River bottoms—armed not with a rifle, but a reporter's notebook—and you have Bend in the River.
