A tightrope walker about to pull off one of the biggest stunts ever performed. A committed priest too busy looking out for the downtrodden to take care of himself. A pair of prostitutes who are also mother and daughter. A rich woman crippled by grief and her stoic judge husband. A couple of artists who fled the New York night life. Computer hackers. A brutal car wreck. Slums. Penthouses. Robbery. Charity. 
 It's either another day in New York, or it's the shittiest circus ever. 
 In 1974, a French acrobat named Philippe Petit made even jaded NewYorkers take notice when he illegally rigged a tightrope between the not-quite-finished World Trade Center towers and then spent the better part of an hour walking it over 1300 feet in the air. In fact, he didn't just walk the tightrope, he danced, hopped and ran across it as well as laying down on the wire on his back at one point. 
 Petit's stunt momentarily captivated the city, and Colm McCann uses that event as the center of a web of intriguing stories about a group of people from all walks of life find themselves unknowingly impacting each other. McCann shifts to a variety of different perspectives, even switching from first person to third person. Whether the narrator is a male Irish immigrant or a black female hooker or a Hispanic single mother, all the voices seem authentic and unique and all of them offer up differing world views that still share a common theme of trying to cling to what they love. 
 My favorite parts are the interludes where McCann describes Petit's preparations and the walk itself. Petit was no Jackass-style daredevil. He spent over a year of careful planning and practicing for the moment when he and his crew could sneak to the top of the towers and rig the tightrope. The descriptions of the calm that fell over Petit as he stepped out on the wire and then proceeded to put on a show for the New Yorkers watching far below is almost enough to give a reader vertigo just trying to picture it. And of course, the shadow of 9/11 hangs over the book with the reader knowing that Petit practically walked on air at an incredible height between two objects that don't even exist any more. 
 This is some top notch writing with a powerful story of how one man's desire for a transcendent moment can spin off into more directions than anyone can possibly imagine.