A fog-shrouded swamp. A boy left behind. A predator that doesn’t hunt—yet never leaves.

When fifteen-year-old Jay becomes separated from his class during a field trip into the Florida slough, he’s armed with almost nothing: a half-charged drone, a paper map, and a bottle of warm water. Every step through the swamp is a fight against mud that pulls, roots that trip, and eyes in the water that might belong to logs—or alligators.

But the swamp isn’t empty. Moss, a scarred, ancient alligator, shadows Jay’s journey. Not as protector, not as hunter—simply as presence. In the fog and silence, that presence feels like guidance. The swamp doesn’t offer mercy, but it does offer patterns, and Jay learns fast: breathe steady, mark your trail, shrink the map, keep moving.

Rescue comes—but the real danger is only beginning. Jay’s drone footage reveals something no one expected: bright orange survey flags cutting through Moss’s nesting banks. They don’t belong. They mean change is coming.

Jay is safe. The swamp is not.

And Moss, keeper of Stillwater’s silence, waits under dark water for what comes next.

If you love atmospheric survival thrillers, coming-of-age suspense, and nature that bites back, you’ll be pulled under by Stillwater Lost—the gripping first novel in The Stillwater Series.