The Drift

The Drift

When duty demands everything, what remains when you can give no more? Firefighter Zach Holloway has spent his career running toward danger, saving lives without hesitation. But one unavoidable tragedy shatters everything he believed about himself. Cleared by investigation yet consumed by guilt, Zach retreats to the remote mountains of Northern California—to the river canyon where he once found peace. In the wilderness, surrounded only by the relentless flow of water and the quiet companionship of stray dogs and wild creatures, Zach confronts the impossible weight of a moment that changed everything. Through journal entries that chart his unraveling, we witness a man torn between the identity he built over decades and the unbearable reality he cannot escape. As his crew at the firehouse grows desperate, as his brother Danny's calls go unanswered, and as Chief Morrison struggles to reach the firefighter he trained like a son, Zach drifts further from shore—toward a decision that will devastate everyone who tried to save him. The Drift is a devastating exploration of trauma, guilt, and the limits of human endurance. With unflinching honesty and profound empathy, Daniel J. Rodgers delivers a powerful meditation on the hidden costs of heroism and the terrible isolation that can consume even the strongest among us. For readers of literary fiction that doesn't look away from life's hardest truths. "Some currents are too strong to fight. Some wounds go too deep to heal."