This debut story collection lifts its title from a 1909 manifesto co-authored by urban designer Daniel H. Burnham, which also provides the epigram invoking the city\u2019s motto: \u201cUrbs in Horto\u2014a city set in a garden.\u201d More than a century later, that garden is no Eden. There are way more cracks than flowers: cracks in the foundation; psychological cracks in the narrators and characters, whose vernacular provides the style of these stories. Cracks in their relationships, their marriages, their families. Yet there is also great resilience, through the survival skills necessary in a city that plays rough. In \u201cEnumerator,\u201d the opening and longest story, Margaret Cieslak-Jablonski, a Polish immigrant, loses her American husband and gains a job as a census taker. She lives on a block so undistinguished that it isn\u2019t considered part of any of the northwest neighborhoods around it: \u201cNo one wanted to claim that swath of poor transients, weedy lots, and industrial waste.\u201d Her temp job has her tracking and counting those who are ever farther off the grid. And she\u2019s very good at it, learning the stories of those who had otherwise evaded scrutiny and gaining entry where she isn\u2019t legally permitted. \u201cOut of Egypt\u201d follows, with a teenage boy named Izzy Bramaciu apparently unconscious in the hospital, from a car accident arranged by his scamming father for insurance fraud. Then \u201cChez Whatever,\u201d where very white Lincoln Park finds a Black girl increasingly frustrated and resentful in a Valentine\u2019s Day blizzard, following a fight with her more privileged white girlfriend. \u201cDibs\u201d explores the Chicago tradition of saving winter parking places amid the gentrification of a frequently changing Humboldt Park. The progression of the stories connects neighborhoods, with protagonists in one story becoming bit players in another.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This debut story collection lifts its title from a 1909 manifesto co-authored by urban designer Daniel H. Burnham, which also provides the epigram invoking the city\u2019s motto: \u201cUrbs in Horto\u2014a city set in a garden.\u201d More than a century later, that garden is no Eden. There are way more cracks than flowers: cracks in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}