Linking the lives and tales of a place and its people through tragedy and consequence, blind faith and redemption, The Temple of Air, Patricia Ann McNair’s award-winning collection of finely tuned short stories, spans three decades to present a portrait of working class Americans.

From babysitter and bus ticket salesman to construction worker and cult leader, the residents of New Hope—whose lives intersect after a tragic accident during a summer carnival—chase dreams and suffer disappointment against the subtle backdrop of a Midwestern landscape. The stories are unapologetic yet magical, bringing to life the daily struggle under the weight of war, poverty, natural disaster, illness, grief, and greed, even as the residents enjoy the comforts of solace, friendship, sex, love, ice cream, and the comics found wrapped around bubblegum.

This revised second edition features new stories that will delight both new and old readers, as well as a new introduction by Christine Maul Rice.

"The Temple of Air is a book of unusual pleasures; each story offers the readers a small roller coaster of anticipation, fear, surprise, recognition, satisfaction. This is a beautiful book, intense and original."

— Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife

"Fiercely imagined, emotionally charged, Patricia Ann McNair’s first collection celebrates the extraordinary lives in ways that will leave you breathless."
— A. Manette Ansay, author of Good Things I Wish You

"The sheer and compelling energy of Patricia Ann McNair's prose not only dazzles, but more so, draws the reader into the deep and complex emotional reaches of her irresistible and compassionately rendered characters. The Temple of Air is both fierce, and unflinching in its affection for people, and place, and a wide range of tones—a kind of graceful caper by which this writer steals the reader's heart."
— Jack Driscoll, author of Twenty Stories

"These narratives are fierce, fearless, brave, as stylistically pure as Raymond Carver, as hard hitting as Mary Gaitskill, as lyrically impassioned as Stuart Dybek. Still, McNair is an original, even when her characters miss their good chances or hurt what they love, we feel compassion, we hear the pure note of human pathos. You won’t be able to put these stories down."
— Anne-Marie Oomen, author of As Long As I Know You: The Mom Book

"These stories speak to us in voices that are clear, urgent, tough, and shockingly wise. Patricia Ann McNair’s The Temple of Air is about the spiritual resilience of endangered children, the survival methods of battered adults, and the presence of grace even in our ruined century."
— David Huddle, author of The Faulkes Chronicle

"The Temple of Air is a collection of fever-dreams: often haunting, always beautiful. These are lyrical stories that sear themselves into the reader’s subconscious, and we are incredibly lucky to have them."
— John McNally, author of The Fear of Everything

"The voices of McNair’s characters whisper directly into your ear, inhabiting their stories so completely that the author herself becomes invisible, and the stories simply flow, looping gracefully backward and forward, encircling and encompassing one another like an ancient Celtic etching. The Temple of Air is a wise and masterful book." — Dennis McFadden, author of Jimtown Road

REVIEWS AND PRESS BLURBS

"McNair’s plainspoken yet imaginative, complexly unnerving, and haunting stories raise essential questions of fate and will, appearances and truth, guilt and compassion."
— Booklist

"…violently creative…"
— Chicago Sun-Times

"The stories in The Temple of Air are steeped in a particular brand of hospitality and violence. They are definitively Midwestern, navigating deftly between the everyday and the disturbing, the prosaic and the poetic."
— NewCity

"[McNair] reaches down deep into the cores of her characters, pulls out their secrets, the things that make them human, and presents them to you in this book…stunning debut collection."
— TheNervousBreakdown.com

"The stories within The Temple of Air are indeed thought-provoking. But what the reader will truly discover are people whose tales will touch a heart, tear an eye, and warm a smile."
— Freeport Journal-Standard

HONORS AND AWARDS

Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year

Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award for Prose Society of Midland Authors Finalist in Adult Fiction