To the inmates of Nebraska State Penitentiary, Iris Murphy is "The Bird." This is not because of her spare, immaculate beauty, although that is undeniable, but because of her relentless ethic. The public defender is a rarity in the Omaha justice system; she'd be a rarity in any justice system.

There are two things that Iris wishes to discuss, sitting in Sgt. Clayton Santos-Anderson's cubicle one Monday morning. One: Her home has been vandalized, possibly by a dangerous criminal. Two: Iris is dying. "The oncologist can buy me time," she explains. She will use that time wisely.

In her collection of linked stories, "The Enigma of Iris Murphy," winner of the Tartt First Fiction Award, Edina author Maureen Millea Smith unpacks the enigma that is Iris by delving into the lives and the psyches of her friends, family members and lovers. The title story, for example, introduces us to Iris' confidant Paul Simmons, a gay recovering alcoholic "shoved out of the closet" by his ex-wife, newly in love with a man from his investment club. "Life would have been far easier for him if he had married and divorced Iris Murphy," he reflects over dinner, although he is not blind to her more irritating qualities. ("It is the Irish in Iris that tends to make her a good girl martyr," he observes, both annoyed and impressed.)

Time here is fluid, a single action in the present unlocking the whole history of a relationship in the past. "Kills Pretty Enemy" begins with Iris' son Miles, now a Foreign Service officer in Nairobi, and flashes back to his childhood, Iris explaining and re-explaining his father's absence. It is another portrait of Iris, but from a new angle, this time illuminated by the relationship between her former lover, Cameron Kills Pretty Enemy, and their beloved son.

Each piece reveals a different facet of Iris, inscrutable, dignified and good; we meet not only Cameron but also his cousin, Kenneth Yellow Dog, a thoughtful librarian who once kissed Iris on the street after a Douglas County Democratic Party gathering and is now erroneously imprisoned for stealing a donkey from the zoo. We meet Cameron's unpaid college intern, who speaks with Iris once on the phone. If she has a flaw, it is her self-contained perfection. Even her suffering is refined, even noble.

Smith favors bittersweet melancholy over sharper kinds of pain; there is a fundamental kindness to her characters, their faults outweighed by an almost quaint wash of sweetness. Occasionally, the dialogue — gentle and direct — tips into stiltedness, conversations filtered through a sepia haze. At times, this gives the collection a stagy quality, and sometimes the book seems to waver under the weight of so much meaning. But then, Smith, like Iris herself, has little time for small talk. At its core, "The Enigma of Iris Murphy" is a moving meditation on the meaning of a life well-lived.

Smith

Rachel Sugar is a writer in New York.