It’s the winter of 1964 and Tom Crutchfield has returned to the brutal coal fields of Western Kentucky to find the mother who abandoned him 21 years earlier, only to stumble upon the disappearance of two hunters with secrets of their own.

He’s a semester short of a degree and corner office at his father’s large construction firm, but a mystery Christmas card has Tom questioning both his past and the life laid out before him.

Tom finds himself at the gray Ohio River where two hunters have gone missing, and begins to investigate a chain of events rife with hints of murder, corruption, and infidelity. He finds love in a beer shack. Temptation while surrounded by the mounted trophies of a scorned spouse. There’s a new boss, heavy into the drink and stained in ink, and a landlord who roams the grounds in blue slippers armed with an action-pump shotgun.

 Through these characters, Tom discovers the depths people go to protect the ones they love and conceal the sins of their past. In piecing together and telling the story of the two missing men, Tom unlocks the secrets of his own birth and questions whether he can forgive.

 Those who revel in the settings, characters and writing style of Southern versifier Ron Rash’s The Caretaker will find a home with this literary mystery. Or imagine 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.

Bend in the River is a warm and touching tale of mystery, family rediscovered, and love. Reminiscent of Hemingway in the writing and the weather, which is its own force, this story is told straight-forward without the baroque. The characters and setting, including the Ohio River that runs through the story, are vivid and remain with you after the final page.

Axel Dahlberg, Author/Editor/Teacher

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