Maxine Clair’s Rattlebone is at the top of my list of the best books I’ve read in the last decade or so. Set in a starkly-segregated Kansas City, KS neighborhood in the 1950s, the book is a collection of stories with different focal characters. But at the heart of the book is Irene, who we first meet as an elementary student and follow until she comes of age. Each story is complete in itself, investing us in its characters as they are propelled toward surprising, and sometimes even shocking, turns of events and important resolutions. And yet each story also serves as an integral part of the larger whole—a portrait of the Rattlebone neighborhood and its residents, their victories and defeats, the tenuous peace they make with each other and the world around them, which is threatening in myriad ways. Clair’s prose, as a whole, is somehow both dazzling in its beauty and also just enough, never too much. Clair is both expansive and judicious; she can convincingly convey a whole lifetime in ten pages or so.

That I studied for five years toward a PhD in the history of the short story and never came across Maxine Clair’s writing seems like not only a terrible oversight but an injustice. This re-issue by McNally feels like the rarest of gifts, found treasure. Though these stories are set in the 50s, they are as relevant today as any contemporary collection. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.