Heroku Tails suggesting postgres database column doesn't exist, but it does and works in localhost - postgresql

Question

I have an app deployed on heroku. My production and dev environments both use PostgreSQL and I use knex for my database querying. I am getting an issue where no resources load onto a page and heroku log --tail says this:
2022-08-23T21:34:19.565970+00:00 app[web.1]: There is an error here: select *, "authors"."name" as "author_name", "authors"."id" as "author_id" from "books" inner join "authors" on "books"."author_id" = "authors"."id" where "books"."id" = $1 limit $2 - column books.author_id does not exist
However, the call works fine on localhost - I have checked my database schema on pgadmin and it appears that the column does exist.
Here is the call to the database:
function getBookById(id) {
console.log(id)
return db('books')
.join('authors', 'books.author_id', 'authors.id')
.where('books.id', id)
.select('*', 'authors.name as author_name', 'authors.id as author_id')
.first()
}
I have done a bit more diving in and looks like it is breaking on a number of database hits and returning 503s.
Here is some more error messages I am getting when I run heroku log --tail
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434109+00:00 app[web.1]: at Parser.parseErrorMessage (/app/node_modules/pg-protocol/dist/parser.js:287:98)
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434109+00:00 app[web.1]: at Parser.handlePacket (/app/node_modules/pg-protocol/dist/parser.js:126:29)
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434110+00:00 app[web.1]: at Parser.parse (/app/node_modules/pg-protocol/dist/parser.js:39:38)
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434110+00:00 app[web.1]: at TLSSocket.<anonymous> (/app/node_modules/pg-protocol/dist/index.js:11:42)
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434111+00:00 app[web.1]: at TLSSocket.emit (node:events:513:28)
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434112+00:00 app[web.1]: at addChunk (node:internal/streams/readable:315:12)
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434112+00:00 app[web.1]: at readableAddChunk (node:internal/streams/readable:289:9)
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434112+00:00 app[web.1]: at TLSSocket.Readable.push (node:internal/streams/readable:228:10)
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434113+00:00 app[web.1]: at TLSWrap.onStreamRead (node:internal/stream_base_commons:190:23) {
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434113+00:00 app[web.1]: length: 127,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434114+00:00 app[web.1]: severity: 'ERROR',
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434114+00:00 app[web.1]: code: '42703',
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434114+00:00 app[web.1]: detail: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434115+00:00 app[web.1]: hint: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434115+00:00 app[web.1]: position: '22',
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434115+00:00 app[web.1]: internalPosition: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434115+00:00 app[web.1]: internalQuery: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434116+00:00 app[web.1]: where: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434116+00:00 app[web.1]: schema: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434116+00:00 app[web.1]: table: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434116+00:00 app[web.1]: column: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434117+00:00 app[web.1]: dataType: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434117+00:00 app[web.1]: constraint: undefined,
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434117+00:00 app[web.1]: file: 'parse_target.c',
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434118+00:00 app[web.1]: line: '1061',
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434118+00:00 app[web.1]: routine: 'checkInsertTargets'
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434118+00:00 app[web.1]: }
2022-08-24T02:25:36.434240+00:00 app[web.1]: There is an error here: insert into "books" ("author_id", "blurb", "cover_image", "genre", "pub_year", "title") values ($1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6) returning "id" - column "author_id" of relation "books" does not exist
I'm not sure if this is something weird with heroku's postgres - or something I'm doing wrong (more likely). It is unclear to me how to further trouble shoot this issue.
Thanks for an help