North of Ordinary
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gardiner's first book in 20 years (after The Magellan House) is a well-crafted collection of wistful character studies, most of which explore the history and natural world of Northern Virginia. In "Tree Men," a student goes on leave from college to work for a tree service, hoping the manual labor and exposure to the outdoors will help with his depression and anxiety. It does for a time, until he realizes he'll eventually have to return to "that place where thinking was considered work." The narrator of "Freak Corner," a standout, reflects on his Arlington childhood in the 1950s, when his deaf sister was bullied by the Knox brothers, who lived nearby. The Knoxes also pick on a trans woman whose gender change is politely accepted by the narrator's parents but brings "notoriety" to the neighborhood. Lester, the retired and feeble main character of "Survival," walks to a graveyard formerly used for the town's Black people, planning to visit the grave of a man he once worked with. When Lester, who is white, encounters an elderly Black man repairing a vandalized wall, their conversation yields a subtle examination of the region's racial conflicts, past and present. There's not much plot to speak of, but Gardiner holds the reader's attention with his incisive prose. These reflective tales were worth the wait.
