Drift
Beta ReadingA Life in Shifting Realities
Jay has been keeping a list since he was nine years old. Not of wishes or grievances, but of things that change without warning.
A car that was blue one day and green the next. A grandmother who taught fifth grade until everyone insisted she had always been a nurse. Small inconsistencies no one else seems to remember.
As Jay grows older, the changes grow larger and more personal. Friendships, family, and his very sense of reality shift in ways that leave him increasingly isolated. The question that has haunted him his entire life remains the same: Am I losing my mind, or is the world itself coming undone?
Drift is a quiet, deeply moving literary novel that follows one ordinary man across six decades of life. From childhood in small-town America to fatherhood, professional success, devastating loss, and eventual reckoning, Jay carries the lonely burden of being the only witness when reality itself seems to change around him.
Blending psychological depth with subtle speculative elements and profound human insight, Jeff Bristow explores the fragile nature of memory, the search for connection, and the redemptive power of faith and presence in the face of uncertainty. At once intimate and universal, Drift asks whether the ground we stand on is ever as solid as we believe and how we find the courage to keep living when it is not.
For readers of literary fiction, psychological drama, and contemplative stories about family, memory, and resilience, Drift is a haunting and ultimately hopeful meditation on what it means to endure.
