Where You Come From Is Gone

Christopher Johnston has written an unforgettable novel about family bonds, the pleasure and pain of hard work, and the forces at work against rural communities. In prose that’s as laconic as the fishermen, mink farmers, and politicians that fill this novel, the story of this family comes blistering to life. What an homage to a way of life and to the northern Minnesota temperament. What a tremendous reminder of how long the struggle’s been real. And what a testament to excellent storytelling. —Peter Geye, author of a Lesser Light and other novels Written with vivid attention to detail, the prose centers the indefatigable nature of change as the unwelcome harbinger of growing old. The Minnesota scenery, the minutiae of commercial fishing, and the brutality of harvesting mink are covered with unflappable precision. Where You Come From Is Gone is an epic American novel about the eternal chasm between cosmopolitanism and subtle rural life.

—Foreword Reviews

As each generation searches for its place among the Northern Minnesota waters, Johnston touches on themes of family legacy, identity, and the eternal battle between tradition and progress. A touching tribute to generational legacies and rural living.

—Publishers Weekly Booklife

Where You Come From Is Gone is a haunting tribute to fathers and sons, brothers and uncles, wives and mothers, and the family business that sustains them, until it no longer can. In commanding prose that is equally at home on land or over water—in the stink of a mink ranch, along smoke-swept prairies, on the swells of a fishing boat—Christopher Johnston deftly navigates leaving home and coming back in a story of heartbreak spanning three generations whose people are caught between the life they want and the life they get.

—Carol Dunbar, award-winning author of The Net Beneath Us

In this stunning debut novel, Christopher Johnston brings to life a border town on Lake of the Woods. Johnston understands as few authors not only class and the rural/urban divide, but also the nature of work and the bittersweet love of place. The book gutted me on many levels. Where You Come From Is Gone is a bracing addition to the literature of the Minnesota-Canadian borderlands.

—Carla Hagen, award-winning author of Hand Me Down My Walking Cane and Muskeg

There is no escaping three generations of history in this bittersweet family story. The vivid scenes make it possible for the reader to know what it was like to crew on a fishing boat or skin mink. Where You Come From Is Gone is a story that speaks to those who have felt like they were caught up in the wake of a trawler and want to be more like a rock against the crashing waves of change.

—Jill Swenson, writer of Memory, Time, History on Lake of the Woods on Substack

Where You Come From is Gone is a raw and moving story of a way of life lost to history. The novel follows one generation of a family in the small northern Minnesota town of Worland, where they operate commercial fishing and mink farming businesses. The details are vividly rendered by author Christopher Johnston, who clearly has done his research if not lived it. The story is both engaging and tragic. Most highly recommended.

—Kurt Johnson, Minnesota Book Award winner for The Barrens

Where You Come From is Gone weaves a complex choreography of private longings, solitude, and faults driven by the struggles of a Midwest family to keep their businesses and their bond afloat. It poses questions on identity, legacy, and adaptation to change we are all driven to ask ourselves.

—Rosanna Staffa, author of The War Ends At Four