SOURCE: An introduction to The Race and Other Stories, by Sinclair Ross, University of Ottawa Press, 1982, pp. 15-21.

In the following essay, McMullen provides a stylistic and thematic analysis of Ross's short fiction.

The Race and Other Stories includes all of Sinclair Ross's previously uncollected short stories and a chapter from Whir of Gold, here titled "The Race," which stands on its own as a short story. Heralded as a prairie writer and best known for his stories of the bleak dust-bowl prairie of the Great Depression, Ross has also written of urban life and, briefly, of army life, as these stories demonstrate.

Not a prolific writer, Ross has published only four novels and eighteen stories. He spends much time rewriting and revising, and he destroys much of what he writes. His work indicates that the discipline and control essential to survival on the prairie can be adapted...