bf oswald was born in 1934 in Lakewood, Ohio and lived in Bay Village, Ohio until he left home at age sixteen. He completed his high school education at Randolph Macon Academy, Front Royal, VA; earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology at Allegheny College, Meadville, PA, and a Masters in Counseling, starting his graduate work at Oberlin College and completing it at METHESCO, Delaware. Ohio. During his adult life he served as a drill instructor in the U.S. Air Force, worked as a life guard at the Hotel Biloxi MacArthur, a short order cook in Meadville, a printer's devil in Philadelphia, and as a federal investigator working out of Baltimore. He relocated to his birth state and in various communities around North Central, Ohio was a high school teacher, minister, dairyman, contractor, and practiced as a psychotherapist - hypnotherapist, finally accepting an associate professorship at North Central Technical College, Mansfield, Ohio where he taught for twenty-five years and was awarded the honor of becoming the second Emeritus Professor in the college's history. Oswald has taught 23 different courses that covered all aspects of human development and behavior from conception through dying and death, and created eighteen of those courses especially for the nursing, radiology, human services, and behavioral science curriculums. He also authored two textbooks: one on human sexuality, the other on aging, both published by the college; and contributed poetry, essays, and short fiction in the college literary journals. He and his wife, Cynthia, have a combined family of four daughters and a son, eight grandchildren, and two great grandsons. When not at home in rural south central Florida they travel the country in an RV visiting family and friends or touring. Echoes of Ellen, his first novel, was nominated for the National Book Award and an EPPIE; Flood: A Saga, his second, was published as an e-book in 2009. His third novel, Five Women in Black, was published in June 2010 and his fourth, The Footpath in December 2010. He is currently working on his next novel, The Rental. His work experiences and his travels have contributed significantly to the development of the characters and backgrounds in his novels.