"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
- William Faulkner
Bartholomew's Fair
Released August 2026
After his wife's sudden death, Jonathon Mayes does the only thing grief allows - he drives until the road becomes a question. On the bluffs of Lake Pepin, he finds an old tudor mansion, a forgotten village that was never built, and the dark legend of Wilson Crowley, an English showman whose American dream was paid in human suffering. What begins as an escape becomes obsession. A vanished wife, a damaged girl named Meadow, a haunted painting, a historian's dangerous discovery, and the ghostly blueprint of Bartholomew's Fair pull Jonathon into a mystery where the past is not buried - it is waiting. At once, gothic, tender, suspenseful, and wildly original, page-turning Bartholomew's Fair is about grief, desire, exploitation, and redemption. It asks how much of history survives inside a house, and what happens when a distraught man starts listening - and discovers some stories refuse to remain unfinished.
"As a novelist, I admire books that take real risks and Bartholomew's Fair takes them beautifully. John Jensvold begins with the rawest human wound then follows grief into historical mystery, and the strange architecture of a haunted place. What impressed me most is the novel's confidence: its patience with character, its eye for landscape, and its willingness to let sorrow become suspense without ever cheapening it. This is a rare imaginative work - part psychological journey, part gothic puzzle, part moral reckoning, Bartholomew's Fair is the kind of novel where other writers read with envy, gratitude, and deep respect."
- Daniel Roettger, author of Rolling Pigeons
— Name, Title
Other wORKS
Coming 2027 Jailbreak Season: Collected Stories
Owen Martin is a self-made man, a one-time orphan, and a skilled wielder of tools. Wandering from gig to gig in the north country, he can’t ignore the timeless simplicity of the slightly worn Palisade Point resort on Lake Superior’s North Shore. There he meets two very different sisters, Ann and Roxie Martini, who are both attracted to Owen for different reasons. Tragedy strikes even before he’s hired on. The summer unfolds in a series of life-altering events that put the Martini family and its cherished Palisade Point squarely in the crosshairs of corporate interests. Soon, the sisters find themselves vulnerable and alone, with only a new friend to trust.
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“Guadeloupe”
Short story featured in From the Depths, published by Haunted Waters Press, 2021.
Click to view John's interview with Haunted Waters Press
Click image to purchase magazine.
“Cap Gun”
Short story featured in Tin Can Literary Review, published by Haunted Waters Press, 2021.
“What About This One?”
Short Story published as a Top 25 finalist in the Santa Fe Writers Project national fiction awards, 2009.
“Forward Motion”
Short story featured in From the Depths, published by Haunted Waters Press, 2014.
“The Same Prairie Grass”
Short story featured in Alligator Juniper, literary journal published annually by Prescott
College (AZ), 2009.
Testimonials
"In Bartholomew's Fair, John Jensvold delivers a moving story about what it means to carry loss - and what it takes to face the past. When Jonathon Mayes loses his wife in a tragic accident, he leaves behind his former life in Duluth and retreats to a quiet Minnesota town on the Mississippi River hoping for peace and a fresh start. Instead, he finds himself living in an old house haunted by real historical trauma. As Jonathon confronts both personal grief and the dark legacy buried in the town's history, the novel explores how healing often begins with truth-telling. Bartholomew's Fair is an honest, deeply felt meditation on memory, sorrow, love, and starting again."
- Thomas Saylor, Remembering the Good War and Minnesota in the 70s
"John Jensvold has crafted a story of loss and longing rooted in the contradictions of Minnesota's present and past. Bartholomew's Fair is a compelling page-turner with more than enough secrets and surprises to keep the reader on edge. But more than that, it's a chronicle of a damaged soul, stumbling toward redemption."
-Dave Kenney, Minnesota in the 70s and Camp du Nord: All Nature Sings
In his beautifully crafted novel Until the Big Water Takes Them, John Jensvold brings the Minnesota landscape and the tensions of family and industry to life. The majestic landscape and eminent figures who explored, wrote about, and cultivated this vibrant, volatile terrain not only loom large, but function as characters with whom everyone must respect and contend. Until the Big Water Takes Them is a gorgeous novel with a propulsive story that readers will not want to put down.
~Aaron Tillman, author of Consolation Miracles and Every Single Bone in My Brain
"John Jensvold’s debut novel demonstrates he is an accomplished storyteller. Until the Big Water Takes Them plays out across a region undergoing rapid social and economic transformation – with unforeseen and at times tragic consequences. Jensvold’s novel grips a reader from the first chapter to the last."
~(Professor) Thomas Saylor, Concordia University—St Paul, author of Minnesota’s Greatest Generation and Minnesota in the ‘70s
In Bartholomew's Fair, John Jensvold weaves a compelling place-based story that explores how one man works to escape the grief of his wife's death by finding a new place to call home."
~Dave Hakensen, Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover
Until the Big Water Takes Them is a romance between a man and woman and between humans and the ever-changing North Shore, as well as about a vanishing way of life."
~Mary Ann Grossman, literary critic, Saint Paul Pioneer Press
