Early ReviewersChristopher Benfey

The long-awaited return of a quintessentially American storyteller

“You’re as likely to be hit twice by lightning on a Monday as see a wood chipper pull a man into its maw.”

So begins North of Ordinary, John Rolfe Gardner’s virtuosic story collection of survivors getting by despite the odds in a shifting world. In these pages, we meet a nervous young apprentice to a weathered tree climber; a dangerously obsessed student at a Southern Bible college; an attractive schemer trying to build an audience for her tiny radio station; an undercover, cross-dressing lawman whose friendship changes the life of a deaf child in a suburban cul-de-sac; and an elderly Black mason whose knowledge of the town’s history harbors truths that shake his visitor’s foundation. Surprising, touching, and deeply humane, the ten stories of North of Ordinary offer an intimate, revelatory look at our fractured society and pull us together through the power of art.

“A lovely, meditative collection, steeped in old ways and days and with a true sense of place.” —Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and Natural History

“What dazzling stories John Rolfe Gardiner writes. His characters, in the best way, are earthbound, caught in the web of work and school and family, past and present. Each story is a world, perfect and complete, and when I read the last one I marveled that so much wisdom and beauty could be contained in a single volume: North of Ordinary.” —Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The Road from Belhaven