This wonderful collection of affecting tales is long overdue a review, but don't let the delay stop you from taking a chance on Lawrence Santoro's magical vision. Chances are you'll be glad you did. A review had been promised, but then Life intruded again and again, and the volume languished undeservedly in a To Finish stack that nibbled at the edges of my conscience. Now that you know the genesis of this overdue look at Just North of Nowhere, let me say that if you take my advice and add it to your collection, it will be unlike almost anything on your shelves.

If you left your Garrison Keillor next to your Ray Bradbury too long, and together they slid sideways and nudged your Lovecraft, maybe your Hawthorne, you might find those themes and styles had melded together to form this book, which would jump off the shelf and request to be read aloud. Indeed, Santoro implores the reader to try sounding out the tales, and you can hear why if you try it. Read right, it will remind you some of the tall-tale form, with its exclamation marks and the oft-used exclamations Cripes! and Criminies! or Uff-da! which might seem likely to annoy, but don't because they catch the rhythm of Bluffton's native speakers and their as-oft-as-not Scandinavian roots.

The town of Bluffton is located in the mysterious Driftless Zone, the part of the Midwest that did not get carved up by glaciers. You'll recognize it if you've been to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana. Santoro's is an amalgam of all those, with its Sons of Norway and other Scandinavian influences, its pie-laden diner (American House—EATS!) plus its Native American ghosts, and its sometimes dubious pioneer spirit. Plus, its monsters and shadows and ghost trains and magic lightning and witchy women and . . . well, it's also referred to as a place where "things meet." (A bit of Innsmouth there, too, methinks.) Bluffton is a state of mind, perhaps, a place you come to when you aren't looking, and a place you'd probably not find if you were.

Each chapter in this loose novel started life as a short story, but now they form interweaving threads that recall some of Bradbury's best work, in a structure also reminiscent of Charles de Lint's Newford stories, wherein a minor character in one story becomes the protagonist of another, and so on, in concentric circles. You even get a Bradburyan magical carnival, so you know the author's winking at you. He winks quite a bit. The author's live performances of this work are unique, utilizing the rich rhythm to the fullest. When reading off the page, however, your attention may flag and the prose may seem to hide the story from you. The best solution is to read slowly, and allow yourself to become captive to the rhythm and the imagery. Soon you'll find yourself in a Bluffton groove that's hard to shake once you've achieved it. Giving yourself this time allows the savoring of both rhythm and imagery, which lend the stories a great part of their charm. Not to say they aren't also inventive!

Speaking of charm, there isn't a single chapter/tale in this collection that doesn't exude some, and a charming wide-open wonder at the universe and its mysteries as filtered through the eyes of the people of Bluffton, where the strange and unusual is commonplace. Very few of the stories touch upon traditional horror themes, and those that do manage to do it in unconventional ways. If your preference is for horror, you will still find plenty of strangeness in Bluffton, perhaps best represented by the Stoker Award–nominated Lovecraft-pastiche "God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him," which should have won based on its title alone, a story whose gentle humor like as not will sneak up on you only upon rereading.

The sense of wonder you see reflected in these related tales is purely Bradbury-style: Ruth the time-traveling librarian whose portal is a certain photographer's glass plates; Cristobel the beautiful Italian strega (witch) who captivates the menfolk; Leslie the young witch-in-training whose one big accomplishment is hanging a fly ball up in the air; a boy who sees the invisible monsters and slimy, slug-like creatures all around us; Bunch the handyman who lives troll-like under a bridge; elderly people gleefully capturing lightning in mason jars; Ken the blind snake-trapper; an Indian ghost who runs perennially through the town; Karl the deer poacher; the priest and rabbi who raise a golem; a carnival in need of freaks and creatures; and many more whose outlines blur stereotypes while embracing them. In these characters who populate Bluffton and their voices, which Lawrence Santoro has here gleefully and accurately conveyed, will a careful reader find his or her reward. Add a whimsically intricate cover painting by Alan M. Clark and the author's notes about the stories' background, and Just North of Nowhere becomes one of those rare cross-over volumes whose literary and folksy aspirations blend perfectly to make it appropriate for any serious fantasy collection. In other words, if you haven't been to Bluffton, you owe it to yourself to hunt for it—but not on any map. Just head for the Driftless Zone and you may well find yourself there and ready to stay awhile.