Chicago Street Corner Stories starts with a kind of spiritual walking tour in Graceland Cemetery to hear what the ghosts are saying. Wright's descriptions of seasons and vignettes, interspersed with remembrances of people, both famous and personal, who have influenced the rich history and diverse culture of the great city of Chicago, immerse the reader in a truly personal experience. As Chapter 2 introduces the love stories all around these seemingly ordinary corner hangouts and sidewalks and streets, nostalgia meets the present, and introspection reveals lessons learned and imparted. The third chapter hints of fears and loss, but overwhelmingly finds ways to hope, to heal, and to face whatever comes with unblinking knowledge that life itself is a blessing and that our stories are proof of its abundant benefit. Roger Wright's Chicago Street Corner Stories is a prose and poetry version of Chagall's American Stories windows at the Chicago Art Institute. Like the famous blue, enjoined pieces of fragile art glass, Wright's tale of place offers shards — just as Sandberg and Terkel did — in stories that combine for a greater, resplendent whole. While fiction, Wright tells of real places and people. The book is split into three sections, Ghosts Talk, What Love Did, and Hope Remains. The Chicago native summarizes each section to entice the reader forward. I did not need much pushing. Wright's sensory descriptions pulled me right into his narratives. One of the great strengths of his writing is Wright's ability to pull the reader into the scene with all the sounds, smells, tastes, sights, and feels of the moment. As he walks toward the lake on a cold November night, I smell the lake, I feel the cold of the night coming on, and I see the man near the shore. I feel the writer's elation when he identifies the man as Chicago's legendary Studs Terkel, also out for a pre-Thanksgiving Day walk. The writer has me beside him and we witness Keith Jarrett place his fingers on a piano keyboard in a nursing home. I feel Wright's excitement — I see it in the faces of the residents who don't know the jazz great Jarrett. I hear the keyboard as Jarrett's fingers make it sing in the whimsy of jazz. I feel October in Chicago in my bones. Wright clearly loves all the seasons in Chicago, but autumn the most as he comes back to the familiar sensory details of fall in cemeteries, on city streets and in parks, and at the lakeshore. In a story about prizefighter Jack Johnson, Wright describes October, "stops by in October, when the leaves blaze in a red and orange whirlwind, just like one of his fights." While each story is simple, Wright deals in complex themes that vex humans daily, poverty, racism, unrequited love, the meaning of faith, and family relationships. Several of the stories touch on homelessness, or "houselessness" in one case, humanizing a societal issue that most of us tend to bypass. In the shopping cart with the blue tarp are the possessions of a real person with needs, emotions, and perhaps a heart once loved and eager to love. I grew up three hours from Chicago, so it was the Big City near us. We traveled for vacation, for baseball games (anyone can have a bad century), museums, Berghoff's cash-only waiters and Carson's ribs, and visiting family. But Chicago Street Corner Stories is a more intimate view of a city I really did not know until I read this book. Anyone who loves good stories told by an accomplished writer will relish this book, start to finish. — Amy McVay Abbott Books on Amazon: Centennial Farm Family, Whitley County Kid, A Piece of Her Soul Website: AmyAbbottWrites.com Roger Wright has been writing since he could hold a pencil. Along the way he has been a bartender, truck driver, bookstore clerk, ghost writer, Special Education teacher, counselor, and training and leadership development consultant for businesses, faith-based organizations, government, and non-profit groups