North of Ordinary

(Paperback)

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The long-awaited return of a quintessentially American storyteller

Youre 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 towns history harbors truths that shake his visitors 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.

Reviews

Advance Praise for North of Ordinary

Wistful, quirky, and laugh-out-loud funny. . . . Gardiners art seamlessly elides the ordinary. Christopher Benfey, author of A Summer of Hummingbirds and If: The Untold Story of Kiplings American Years (from the Introduction)

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

Thomas McGuane and Larry McMurtry both told me the short story was, to each of them, the most challenging form of prose. Tom said he wrote five novels before he ever turned out one good short story. Larry ceased all attempts at short fiction before I was born. John Gardiner seems to have mastered the short story. These are first rate. James McMurtry, singer-songwriter

Im a fan of John Rolfe Gardiners fiction and will read any book he writes. He has the kind of energetic and clear prose I admire. Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and The Damascus Road

Select Praise for John Rolfe Gardiner

[Gardiner] shows us how things were and how they are becoming what they are going to be. Gail Godwin

Gardiner is a writer worth celebrating. His understanding of [his] characters, and the society they inhabit, is profound. New York Times Book Review

In the best of [Gardiners] stories, the manifold ambiguities and deceptions embedded in such a doggedly unknowable world are held in a kind of tantalizing balancewe readers may never be certain exactly where the truth of a given situation lies, but we know enough to navigate its complexities. Washington Post

[Gardiner] evinces the masters touch. . . . He mixes humor and mystery and when he employs suspense he delivers a revelation. Hudson Review

A master storyteller, richly evocative and thought provoking. Booklist

A superior craftsman. Kirkus Reviews

A wonderfully distinctive writer whose often funny stories are animated by a healing, intelligent compassion for characters groping for redemption in a heartless world. Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

John Rolfe Gardiner was born in New York and grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia during World War II. Recipient of a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Writers Award and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, he is the author of six novels and four collections of short fiction, including North of Ordinary. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, American Scholar, Oxford American, One Story, Pushcart Prize anthology, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Gardiner lives in Middleburg, Virginia, with his wife, ceramic artist Joan Gardiner.