Come and meet local author Yvonne Osborne at the Yale Library and discuss her new book Black River.

Set in rural Michigan’s river district, Black River follows nineteen-year-old Boyd Sopal, a farm boy who expects his life to stay simple until the arrival of the Fulenciano family. Boyd falls for Maggie, the outsider the town refuses to accept. When a confrontation turns deadly, Boyd hides what happened in the fast-moving Black River, believing the current will erase the evidence and the guilt. It does not. As winter deepens and the river swells, suspicion rises. Old prejudices sharpen into threats. Boyd and Maggie are pushed beyond town lines, into the remote wilderness of the Upper Peninsula and Canada,  trying to outrun a secret that keeps resurfacing and a river that refuses to keep quiet.

Black River blends rural noir tension with the momentum of a border-crossing flight, unfolding as a propulsive coming-of-age crime story about legacy, loyalty, and the dangerous myth that silence protects the ones we love.