Chicago is famously a “city of neighborhoods” that somehow balances metropolitan and parochial life. In the seventeen vividly rendered stories in Ghosts of Chicago, John McNally likewise captures the poignancy of both the shared experiences of a city and the interior details of his everyday characters.While McNally resurrects Chicago icons and institutionsincluding John Belushi, Walter Payton, and Richard J. Daley make appearances, and WGNs “Creature Features” and a morning show for children featuring a silent goose are settings– he is ultimately interested in the human condition, whether its railroad mogul George Pullman remembering his greatest triumph or the host of Romper Room experiencing her own awakening during the sexual revolution.Other stories tell of everyday people who must confront their own private ghostsan accountant who falls in love with a woman who is in love with a man on death row; the son of a realtor who discovers his fathers secret life; a memoirist whose dark night of the soul leads him on a journey from which he may never return.McNally may be writing about Chicagoin the words of a Chicago Sun-Times reviewer, “He may have physically left Chicago, but the city has never left him”but like Faulkners Yoknapatawpha or Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, the stories in this book transcend place.