Just North of Nowhere

“Some really small towns are Siren and Flasher. Crampback, Bumhip and Wetwhistle are others. Those places are to the west. Eastward, you’ve got Hog Wallow, Smokey's Hole, Blue Ball, Ong's Hat. A half-mile outside Bluffton there's Engine Warm. Now, Engine Warm's just a notion, no people at all. Compared to Engine Warm, Bluffton's not in the same game for small but it's not much.”

So begins "Just North of Nowhere," Lawrence Santoro’s lyrical exploration of the fantastical, magical, bright and dark town of Bluffton (Pop. 671) in the “Driftless Zone” of the upper Midwest. Bluffton teems with the strange, the wondrous, and the downright dangerous: a house that prowls and preys on the curious, a blind man who sees a century ago, a time shifting librarian who seeks to rebuild the world, just because she can! The 26 chapters of Just North of Nowhere, form what Ray Bradbury might have called an “accidental novel” and includes Santoro's Bram Stoker Nominated horror phantasmagoria, God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him.

“There is only one pleasure greater than hearing Lawrence Santoro read his tales of Bluffton aloud, and that is having them collected here in this volume, where you have the opportunity to read, re-read and savor every little description. The added revelation of this book, for those who have read or heard parts of the narrative separately, is how seamlessly and inevitably it all comes together. Santoro has assembled a remarkable cast of characters, but none so vivid, so funny, so dangerous and variable as Bluffton and surroundings itself. Bluffton is one of those tiny jewels...that reflects the world with excruciating clarity in every facet but casts its light in unfamiliar and unsettling ways. It is at once diabolical and redemptive, as all great works of dark tale-telling should be. And now, with gratitude to Larry, this jewel is ours. May we use it wisely.”

Richard Chwedyk, Nebula Award-winning author of "Bronte's Egg"