“If only the people of a city could know how necessary they are for each other, they could heal each other and be healed in turn. Will the richly realized characters herein grasp this salvation? Either way, through Barry Pearce’s art, we may. Resonant, empathetic, and continually surprising, The Plan of Chicago is a glorious, living map by a master storyteller.” —Alex Shakar, author of Luminarium, The Savage Girl
“Barry Pearce’s Chicago tales cut across the certainties of seasonal change and static divisions in search of connection upon a sprawling flatland. His city dwellers do find light along the way – achingly, bracingly, sometimes incidentally. Yet it is in the insistence of their paths that Pearce captures their resolute spirits while summoning the soul of their city.” —Bayo Ojikutu, author of 47th Street Black and Free Burning
Praise for The Plan of Chicago: A City in Stories — Nov. 2025
“This is a terrific collection. I savored it, one story at a time, the way I do the masters of the genre—Trevor or Munro or Gallant. Like them, Pearce creates in each short story a novel’s worth of rich characterization with deft artistic compression; and like the masters of geographically linked collections—Joyce, Anderson—Pearce renders contemporary Chicago in loving and brutal complexity from a myriad of vivid voices. And in his own stylish manner, Pearce pulls off, again and again, dazzling plotlines that deeply satisfy. I loved reading this book.” —Antonya Nelson, author of Bound and Funny Once
“The power of Pearce’s book rises from the foundational sense of Chicago as a city of neighborhoods. Neighborhood is the level where the great urban themes—race, ethnicity, minority culture, assimilation, inequality, democracy, the American Dream—that elevate the work of writers like Algren, Brooks, Bellow, Terkel, Cisneros, and Kotlowitz have been expressed, a lineage to which this book belongs.” —Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago, Paper Lantern: Love Stories, and Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories
“Like James Joyce’s Dubliners, this collection of stories accumulates a strange cohesive power, and the city itself becomes a character—an arbiter, a friend, an inspiration, a tough customer. The stories are beautifully crafted and carefully written, and while the book is utterly unsentimental, a deep love of place bleeds through the prose. In a culture increasingly bent on the infantilization of its citizens, it’s rare to find a book that’s genuinely written for grown-ups—a dark, honest probing of what it means to be human and to live, right this moment, in Chicago. Barry Pearce is a shrewd, fearless writer, and The Plan of Chicago is the best book I’ve read in a long time.” —Robert Boswell, author of Mystery Ride, Tumbledown, and The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards
“The Plan of Chicago is a tapestry of interconnected stories exploring the intricate intersections of love, identity, and the desperate gambles we take to survive and belong. Set in 21st-century post-industrial Chicago, where lives teeter between chaos and connection, these narratives delve into the complexities of human vulnerability—how past choices and present fears shape us, how love both binds and breaks, and how moments of crisis reveal the raw, unfiltered truths of who we are. With themes of familial bonds, the longing for acceptance, and the recklessness of youth, Barry Pearce’s story collection captures the tender, often tumultuous journey of growing up and growing wise.” —Achy Obejas, author of Boomerang / Bumerán and Days of Awe
Buy The Plan of Chicago
“The modern-day Algren”
—Chicago Magazine