Set in the quirky mountain town of Ipsyniho, Oregon—a community of artists and loggers, dope growers and river guides—Northwest of Normal is the humorous story of one village reinventing the American dream.
Rarely do we meet a character as passionate, as attuned to the ecology of place, and as haunted by flowing water as Andy Trib—a troubled fly fishing guide. Returning to Ipsyniho after a year on the run, Andy embarks on a quest to repair his life’s greatest sin, the betrayal of his surrogate brother Danny Goodman. But before summer’s close, Andy’s quest will end in a staggering act of violence—one that will endanger everything he holds dear.
This is the sometimes bizarre, frequently provocative, and always poignant story of one American who refuses to ride off into the sunset.
Praise for Northwest of Normal
With an engaging combination of irony and warmth, John Larison brings to life the small, offbeat enclave of a fading counterculture and creates a world of whitewater, wild steelhead, and weed that could only be set in Oregon. Northwest of Normal is a skillfully told story about a place unraveling under the pressures of change and betrayal, about the cooptation of a landscape, river, and locality that is disturbingly emblematic of the contemporary Pacific Northwest.
— Ted Leeson, author of The Habit of Rivers, Jerusalem Creek, and Inventing Montana
Some fishing book. Clear-cutting, rampant development, dope-growing, drug-running, betrayal of wild fish and rivers, betrayal of friends and lovers, attempted murder, incurable melancholy—and vegan eateries. Unregulated free-market capitalism comes to the world of Oregon fly-fishing guides! To say that I enjoyed Northwest of Normal doesn't describe the experience John Larison aims to give. But I couldn't put this downpour of a novel down.
— David James Duncan, author of The River Why and The Brothers K
Writers are taught to use all five senses in their descriptions of place, but few do it as well as John Larison in Northwest of Normal.
The result, of course, is that readers won't feel as though they've
read about a unique and fascinating place, but rather that they’ve been
there themselves, experiencing Larison’s wonderful country in all its
soggy, foggy glory.
— Tom Bie, editor of The Drake
Their loves and problems may fill the pages, but the story's core will be place—drawn with the clarity and understanding that can only come from a native Oregonian who is also a former fly fishing guide. This is a first-rate contribution to novels of the West. — The Denver Post
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