Not Long Ago Persons Found
A forensics team investigates the murder of a child and is drawn into a chilling international coverup
The body of a young boy is found floating in a city river with pollen in his lungs from a warm river valley far from the country where he died. Who is he? Why was he carrying only a library card and decorative clay bottle? How is it that he came so far, only to meet such a violent fate?
A biological anthropologist and her husband, the forensic team's translator, are tasked by their agency to gather evidence from the far away country and deliver an explanation--preferably one that suits the political regimes of both countries. But as the scientists' clandestine, parallel study of recent mass graves brings them closer to finding a link between the boy and "the disappeared," the full forces of bureaucracy, fatalism, and forgetting are marshalled against them.
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Become an affiliate"Haunting, gorgeous, mysterious, propulsive--a novel as brilliant about currents of violence as it is about the flow of tree pollen through the air and rivers. As I heard echoes of Coetzee and Didion and a music that is all Osborn's own, I wanted to turn the pages even faster, to learn what would happen next and, at the same time, to slow down and linger on the masterful prose. A stunning accomplishment." --Heather Abel, author of The Optimistic Decade
"J. Richard Osborn's fever dream of a novel brings us into a shadowy world that feels eerily familiar. Riveting and deeply unsettling, Not Long Ago Persons Found dramatizes just how Byzantine the quest for justice has become in our time." --Askold Melnyczuk, author of The House of Widows and The Man Who Would Not Bow
"J. Richard Osborn's near-future world is a menacing mix of science, superstition, and governmental treachery as an edgy couple goes deep undercover to investigate a boy's horrific murder. Not Long Ago Persons Found is exceptionally fast-moving and suspenseful." --Sharyn Skeeter, author of Dancing with Langston
"Part ghost story, part scientific disquisition, and part political intrigue, Not Long Ago Persons Found is a gripping, Borgesian allegory of our futile attempts to see between things--between peoples, places, and 'through gaps in the trees'--in order to find truth and meaning in a world that resists determinacy." --Peter Matthiessen Wheelwright, author of As It Is On Earth and The Door-Man