On impulse, a child stops on the way home from school to pay a relative a visit; Robin s great-grandmother lives on the 68th floor of a Chicago high rise. Lives? Or lived? And is it 68? Or 86? Out of a child s confusion come a remarkable series of encounters between youth and age.

From its dramatic opening to its extraordinary handling of the possibility of a major earthquake occurring in Chicago, Rising Stories is a sometimes wrenching, sometimes amusing, always thought-provoking novel about growing up and growing old; about hope and ambition; about cities and skyscrapers; about everyday life and the lives we live when catastrophe strikes; about the world of the imagination and the world as it is; about what God or good may be; and about death and what we hope or fear may follow.

"The recurring pleasure of Rising Stories lies in the subtle interaction between people and buildings, the skyscrapers of Chicago revealing their various personalities as sites for intimate, sometimes harrowing, human stories. An elegant and affecting novel." --Mark Kingwell, author of Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams

"Rising Stories manages to surprise, satisfy and delight all at the same time, as its protagonists inhabitants of Chicago s skyscrapers recount their stories and those of the towering buildings that are integral to them. The narrative is gentle in tone but magisterial in scope, and shies away at nothing, including the death of hope in various forms. There is never a good reason for not trying to do good, a dead grandmother cautions, but nor should we assume we will succeed. An original and compelling page turner." --Elizabeth Abbott, author of Sugar: A Bittersweet History, and A History of Marriage