The Oxbow, an area in Northampton created by a branch of the Connecticut River, has seen plenty of changes since artist Thomas Cole made it the focus of a well-known 1836 painting. A new book by Northampton author Jonathan Moldover, “The Oxbow Since Thomas Cole” seeks to shed light on its history and evolution throughout the centuries.

Moldover, a retired physician, isn’t a Pioneer Valley native; he and his wife moved here a decade ago, looking to be closer to their children and grandchildren, who live throughout Boston and the Hudson River Valley. The two of them liked Northampton, and it was great to have so many young people in the area: he and his wife, he joked, would “rather be with the colleges around than with old people in Florida.”

When Moldover retired, he wanted a project to keep him busy, and his initial plan was to create a photo essay about how the physical landscape of the Oxbow had changed since Cole created his work. In the process, he wanted to interview longtime residents, but members of the community were hesitant to talk to him and wouldn’t return his calls.

It wasn’t until he spoke with a neighbor at his condo complex who happened to know Andrew Pelis, a longtime Oxbow resident who was interviewed for the book, that he and his wife were able to set up interviews, starting in July 2022, with community members who spoke about their childhoods, family histories, and the ways that the Oxbow has (and hasn’t) changed over the years.

“We went down and spoke to them and explained we don’t represent the city [of Northampton], we don’t have our own agenda, we just want to tell the story,” Moldover said.

The book is divided into two main sections: the first, a series of nine chapters, chronicles the history of the Oxbow; the second is a series of transcripts of interviews with community members. Initially, the plan was that the book wouldn’t be so text-heavy; Moldover said he’s “not generally a writer, but as I got into it, the story was so good that the text dominated the whole project.”

Generally, the interviewees remember their youth with fondness: as Moldover put it, the Oxbow gave them a “free-range childhood” where “at age 10 or 12, they were camping out at night by themselves and had a complete freedom of the place.” The community was tight-knit, made up primarily of descendants of Polish immigrants who moved to the area in the late 1800s and early 1900s to work in local mills. Interviewees reminisced about fishing in summer, setting up Halloween parties in neighbors’ garages in fall, and ice skating outside in winter. Resident Theresa Lipski, quoted in the book, remembered, “It just is a community where you felt safe. And it was a great place to bring kids up. It was easy, because there was no place they could get into trouble.”

Yet two major changes came to the Oxbow in the 1960s to disrupt that sense of peace: the addition of Interstate 91, originally planned to go on one side of the Oxbow or the other, though it ended up going through it; and the creation of the Oxbow Marina. With those, Moldover wrote, “An idyllic pastoral community was cut off from its farmland and exposed to traffic, noise, and pollution without getting any benefit in return. The people of the island have responded with a remarkable degree of acceptance, resilience, and grace. They separate the owners of the marina, whom they like and respect, from the effect its presence has had on their community.”

On Wednesday, March 26, Moldover will present a talk at Forbes Library, called “Two Crossings and a Community,” to celebrate the launch of his book. The event will feature video clips from some of the interviews that went into his book, plus, according to the event description, “answers to the eternal questions: why did the island cross the river, and why did the highway cross the island?”

The painting that has given the Oxbow national recognition now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Its label says that Cole “juxtaposes untamed wilderness and pastoral settlement to emphasize the possibilities of the national landscape, pointing to the future prospect of the American nation.”

Cole might not have been able to foresee the issues that the Oxbow community (and landscape) would face in the nearly 200 years since he finished his painting, but Moldover noted in the book that even through “threats of destruction by floods, an interstate highway through the middle of the island, and increased traffic from a marina, the community survived it all.”