When down-on-his-luck filmmaker Eric Shaw is hired to document the life of dying billionaire Campbell Bradford, he considers the job just the latest in a long line of projects that are beneath him. After Eric attempts to interview Bradford on his hospital deathbed, he heads to the old man's hometown in southern Indiana to see what he can dig up about the Bradford's mysterious, but supposedly colorful, past.

Eric takes an artifact from Bradford back to Indiana with him, an old bottle of mineral water Bradford has been carrying around for decades. Not long after arriving in West Baden, Eric starts to hallucinate. Frightening visions of the past featuring a younger Campbell Bradford haunt Eric and only grow more intense as the days go by. As Eric gets deeper into his research, he realizes with a dawning horror that nothing he was told about his subject can possibly be true. The man Eric met in the hospital, the billionaire who has lived a long and prosperous life as Campbell Bradford, is an imposter. The real Bradford has a bone to pick and now he's free again to do as he pleases. And what he plans to do is take back what belongs to him. As he steps over one dead body at a time, Bradford inches his way toward Eric Shaw with all the focused intensity only a dead man could muster.

Michael Koryta's new novel is American Gothic at its best. In the tradition of Stephen King, SO COLD THE RIVER will most certainly send a chill down your spine and keep you turning pages well into the night.

Book Summary

It started with a documentary. The beautiful Alyssa Bradford approaches Eric Shaw to unearth the life story of her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, a 95-year-old billionaire whose childhood is wrapped in mystery. Eric grabs the job, even though the only clues to Bradford's past are his hometown and an antique water bottle he's kept his entire life.

In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary past--a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once intermingled. Long derelict, the hotel has just been restored to its former grandeur.

But something else has been restored too--a long-forgotten evil that will stop at nothing to settle a decades-old score. And with every move, Eric inches closer to the center of the building storm.