North of Ordinary is a collection of original short stories, all leaning into people living in Midwestern towns, that defines what to keep—and leave—when a town quietly assigns them a role. The Girls Who Worked the Fire Tower follows Hadley and Rowan Two Bulls as they monitor the Black Hills, where a distant voice on the radio and a real wildfire teach Hadley that usefulness matters more than imagined escape. Museum of Broken Snowmobiles centers on Kit, who helps others to turn festival debris into an exhibit that proves a town can face its past honestly and still claim it. How to Lose a County Fair Queen Gracefully tracks Penny after her title is revoked, as she reclaims her public identity by confronting the fair’s expectations and refusing obedience as virtue. The Second Nicest Girl in Town follows Laurel Fitch after Erin Bell leaves, as Laurel rejects inherited expectations of niceness and learns that choosing when to give herself matters more than being automatically relied upon.

Angela Grey’s North of Ordinary takes you into northern towns where life appears quiet at first glance, yet closer attention shows what is real. The anthology is brilliantly written and based on authentic observations. Most impressive is the use of regional dialect, which feels textured and organic. It's hard to pick a favorite, but two stories definitely stood out. In The Winter People Next Door, Fern Dalbec notices a nearby household's routines around meals, snow clearing, and a yearly memorial, and that attention develops into a connection that draws her into their orbit. The second is The Gas Station Valentine, where Dani Kruse works an overnight shift and begins receiving unsigned notes that track her habits with unsettling accuracy, leading to an exchange that alters how she understands her own visibility. Readers drawn to place-driven fiction and close character focus will find this fantastic compilation especially rewarding. Very highly recommended.

Angela Grey’s North of Ordinary is a masterfully crafted collection of 26 interconnected stories set in the frozen lake regions and small towns of the upper Midwest. “The Summer the Bait Shop Started Selling Tarot” introduces recent graduate June Halverson, who spends her final summer working at Long Lake’s bait shop, the same place where her cousin, Eli, does impromptu tarot readings that are more than mere observations for locals who come in to buy minnows. In “The Girls Who Worked the Fire Tower,” Hadley and Rowan use their summer to look for smoke while tracking a disturbing radio voice across the ridges. “What We Took from the River” is the story of a group of college students who must confront the ethics of retrieving objects and their history claimed by the river while magnet-fishing in the Mississippi. The stories range from overnight canoe trips gone awry to country fair queen scandals.

The characters are appealing as they circle familiar landmarks, including The Copper Mule bar, the Red Owl grocery store, and the ever-present Long Lake, which left one with the conflicting desires of either to flee or stay. The characters are young, and their actions also reflect their deep desires and fears, whether they are stage managers, gas station clerks, or orchard workers. The dry wit was telling, and the author’s gift for descriptions kept me racing through each story. North of Ordinary develops themes that reflect familiar experiences that are resonant, such as grief, the quiet terror of becoming the “second nicest girl in town," and fractured friendships. Angela Grey writes so well about ordinary work as a tool of survival and places the characters against a backdrop of complex emotional ecosystems, not just small towns.