OXBOW

Jim Burroughs is a drunk who cannot remember what happened the night his son went missing, but he knows he did not do what the police think he did. In rural river towns like this one in Western North Carolina, river kids suffer one of three fates: they run away, they drown, or they never leave. 

On the twentieth anniversary of Silas’s disappearance, Jim Burroughs lets go of the bridge railing and allows the river to swallow him but instead is spit out downstream in an unfamiliar place. He meets an artist living in the woods and finds connection in a shared disappointment of society. As Jim visits a nearby town for supplies, he discovers a community unlike any he has known. The town embraces him, from the quirky antique shop owner to the tobacco-chewing pastor. He meets a woman with a son the same age as Silas when he disappeared. As Jim falls in love and flirts with a second chance at fatherhood, he becomes torn between finding redemption and going to any lengths to find his missing son.   
 

A redemption story wrapped in a cold-case-turned-warm mystery, OXBOW tells the tale of a grieving father who may have stumbled upon his missing son twenty years later. Centered around a rural southern river, this novel is about the duality of nature and how humankind finds hope in darkness. 

- The long arc of grief and its echoes

- Fatherhood, guilt, and second chances

- The thin line between healing and obsession

- Small-town secrecy and human repair

Complete at 71,000 words.
Currently seeking literary representation.

David Osgood writes fiction rooted in emotional aftermath—where characters navigate the wreckage of memory, loss, and fragile connection. OXBOW is his debut novel.