Where You Are From

by Christopher Lee Nelson

139 pages, Paperback

Published February 18, 2025

About the author

Having received my MFA from NC State University, WHERE YOU ARE FROM is my first book.

Okay, I was actually born at Frye in Hickory, for anyone who wants to be pedantic, but I lived my entire childhood in northern Caldwell County, an area my family first found their way to in 1789. Since that time growing up between Kings Creek and West Lenoir, I have lived many lives. I've been a short order cook, a paralegal for the incarcerated, a university instructor. a ditch-dwelling lost cause, and more!

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where You Are From, Chistopher Lee Nelson’s superb collection of interconnected stories, put me in mind of other place-focused collections like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, or Joseph Geha’s Through and Through. Geha might seem like an odd connection – he’s not widely known, and his stories are focused on Lebanese- and Syrian-Americans in Toledo, Ohio – but for me, the connecting point between Geha and Nelson is the vivid pictures their respective stories paint of people straddling old and new worlds as change comes barreling down on them, ready or not.

In the case of Nelson’s stories, the place is primarily the working-class town of Tucker in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, but Tucker’s furniture industry is either gone or on its way out, depending on where we are on the timeline. Nelson populates his stories with a wide range of well-drawn characters from across socioeconomic lines: a retired drafter hoping he can dismiss rumors of imminent plant closings; a supervisor clinging to a desperate hope that the plant closings will only be temporary; a banker’s wife grappling with the death of her son and the loss of that part of her family in the aftermath of a violent crime. There are no caricatures here, no stock characters out of central casting: Nelson is sympathetic to the people in his stories, even if the world around them is not, and even if they, at times, don’t deserve it. He gives us enough about each person that we can see beyond those “undeserving” moments.

Because of the interconnectedness, this book is best appreciated as a whole rather than individual stories read separately. Sometimes the stories feel somewhat unfinished, but there are two things at play when that’s the case: 1) the lives are unfinished, and that’s the point – change is either coming or has plowed through already, and the people in these stories are still trying to get their bearings, to stay standing, hold on to something, and closure isn’t what most of them want – they want continuance of the lives they’ve already known; and 2) characters and details from one story (or more than one) cross over into other stories, and sometimes we get the eventual resolution of an earlier story in a later one. It’s easier to appreciate those connections and crossed-over details when you read the book as a whole.

The final story in the collection, the title story, electrified me. I’m trying to think of what it felt like for me, and the best I can do is this: It was like watching a movie where suddenly the screen goes black and a crystal-clear voice comes out of the darkness, close and direct, talking directly to you, locked on you, and any sense of remove you may have felt up to that point is gone. For me, this final story brought it all sharply home, and it was the perfect capstone to this collection.

[SarahJessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished reading this short story collection today. Sometimes I will blow through a novel, but good poetry or tight prose takes a lot more out of me. This collection was like that. Lots to sit with, some of which rang true and even tore open old wounds a little bit. Good writing will do that to you.

In college I focused on reading Southern American literature, and it wasn't something I did on purpose. I was just drawn to it. A quarter of a century later I know part of what I love about this tradition is the sense of place, the way the land always ends up as a character in a piece of writing. The land can hold a lot of contradictions in it, just like people do. Think about the way a home becomes a trap during a flood, a place as good as the womb all of a sudden a tomb.

I met Chris when we both worked at Prisoner Legal Services. He'd been there longer than me and knew a lot more. My coworkers teased me when they heard me change my accent when I was on the phone with someone in jail up in the mountains. I had not done it intentionally. Chris explained that this is a thing linguists have observed, called the chameleon effect. Basically we do it to fit in and build community and relationships. So gracious of him, just like this offering.

I recommend it highly to you. If you enjoy Ron Rash, you will love this.

[Jefferson Fortner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading these short stories by Chris Nelson set in his hometown of Lenoir, NC, and in the immediate communities nearby. This is largely writing about an area very similar to my hometown of Mount Holly (about 60 miles closer to Charlotte) in an area west of my town that I am very familiar with, I guess partially due to the fact that my Dad’s family was from Taylorsville, which is only about 40 miles away from my home, and thus an area where I was more than once out-and-about throughout my youth.. It was nice to read about what I consider my home area, especially since Chris’s themes are many that I experienced, as well. Lenior was a furniture manufacturing community and Mount Holly was a textiles / mill village community. We both observed our hometown’s decline as the mills left and people faced reinventing what it meant to be a part of the area if the mills are gone. Some people could not easily make the transition, and that low return on efforts marked lives. Some people slipped into addiction. Of course, others thrived as the area has slowly become more diverse economically. These themes resonated with me, but really, what stood out for me were the places mentioned, places I know, and the at-times lyrical presentation of a landscape that I still dream about all these years later.

[Krystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met Mr Nelson in Lenoir at a local book store where he was promoting his book. I talked to him a little about his book and decided to buy it.
Best decision I made.
I really enjoyed this very personal collection of short stories; how they flowed together and completed each other at the end. This collection is set in an Appalachian town that's been ruined by the economy due to the death of the furniture industry that was once its life. Christopher does a wonderful job of making these stories come to life. The characters are so vividly written. One story hit a little closer to home. They are so raw. My heart broke for Theresa and Mark.
I would highly recommend "Where Are You From?"

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very personal collection of stories. I felt the author's strong tie to to his hometown. The conflicted emotions he shared were so raw that they made me feel like I was intruding.