"The Little Lights of Town is a love letter to the North Woods—Marquette, Michigan, specifically—to people who choose to live in the cold, next to a lake notorious for holding on to its dead. The people who populate this book are not afraid to admit that suicide is always a possibility and therefore love, the land and each other, and thus choose to stay. I love this book for its quiet urgency, its determination to soldier on in the face of grief, its recognition that the Earth—so tenderly and beautifully rendered here—takes care of us all, in her own enduring way."

"Whether in prose or poetry, Johnathan Johnson is a writer of place. Places he has written about include Idaho, Scotland, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Despite their differences, a similar ethos emerges that is fundamental to Johnson’s singular voice and vision. The weather is severe, moody, maritime, challenging; the landscape rugged, wind-chiseled, stubbornly hanging on to its uncompromising gorgeous wildness. If there are streets, the past roams them in step with the living. Whether the tone is elegiac or vibrantly big-hearted—often it’s both—the relationship with landscape elevates Johnson’s narratives, as it does in his new book of stories, The Little Lights of Town. His characters are immersed in place, from without but, more importantly, from within. Their stories are told with Johnson’s signature vitality and empathy. A poet in prose, he’s honed his language to immerse the reader."