Early Praise

What dazzling stories John Rolfe Gardiner writes. Each a world perfect and complete. I marveled that to much wisdom and beauty could be contained in a single volume.

   -Margot Livesey

Larry McMurtry and Thomas McGuane both told me the short story was the most challenging form of prose. Tom said he wrote five novels before he turned out one good short story. Larry ceased all attempts at short fiction before I was born. These are first rate. John Rolfe Gardiner has mastered the form.

– James McMurtry

I would read anything John Rolfe Gardiner writes.

– Jay Parini

For John’s interview with Potomac Review, see News: johnrolfegardiner.net/news/

From the Preface by Christopher Benfey

True Story tellers —and Gardiner is among our most distinguished and distinctive – have always collected their stories close to home.

Whether in Dublin or Yoknapatawpha County seems to make little difference as long as the story teller knows what to listen for.

In these ten stories Gardiner does his listening in a pocket of Northern Virginia laced with old villages and new developments between the nation’s capital and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

His stories seamlessly elide ordinary with a resonant awareness, apt and surprising, not jarring, but something subtler and unexpected.