Ghosts of Chicago

John Belushi, Walter Payton, Richard J. Daley, and Nelson Algren are some of the Chicagoans who inhabit and haunt this new collection of stories from a lauded American writer. In this first story collection since the award-winning Troublemakers, many of the stories deftly resurrect deceased Chicagoans or artifacts of Chicago pop culture, creating an impressionistic portrait of the city. Gene Siskel, impatient with the movie he's watching, taunts Roger Ebert; Miss Betsy, the host of Romper Room, experiences her own awakening during the sexual revolution; railroad mogul George Pullman remembers his greatest triumph as he draws his last breath. Other stories tell of everyday people who must confront their own private ghosts—an accountant who falls in love with a woman who is in love with a man on death row; a boy whose fascination with movie monsters grows stronger as his mother's pregnancy comes to term; a memoirist whose dark night of the soul leads him on a journey from which he may not return. Praised by writers as diverse as Richard Russo, Irvine Welsh, Elizabeth McCracken, T. C. Boyle, and Mitch Albom, John McNally is a voice to be savored.