The National Book Award winner and so deserving!  McCann spins this incredible web of characters around the tightrope walker and the World Trade Center in August, 1974, bringing the complex cast of charcaters drawn in beautifully nuanced detail into the moment of the walk.  The walker plays a supporting role as a magical, fanciful figure while the monk and the prostitute, the grieving Park Avenue mother and the college graduate, Bronx-living, little girl adopting Black, the Jewish judge also grieving his son dead in VietNam, the artist hippies living the Village (Max’s ala Patti Smith) and the cabin in upstate NY whose car inadvertently leads to the death of Corrigan and Jazzlyn, and on and on.  All the characters in this spinning globe connected fatefully with the walker and NYC.