Let the great world spin: a novel

by Colum McCann · 2009

On a sweltering August morning in 1974, a lone tightrope walker dares to stride between the Twin Towers, his daring act turning the city’s sky into a silent witness. Below, the lives of strangers intersect in unexpected ways: a radical Irish monk seeks redemption among Bronx prostitutes; a grieving group of Park Avenue mothers confront the fractures in their shared loss of sons in Vietnam; a young artist’s world is shattered by a hit‑and‑run; and a determined grandmother and her teenage daughter turn to prostitution to survive. Colum McGill’s National Book Award‑winning novel weaves these disparate threads into a luminous portrait of 1970s New York—its pain, its beauty, its mystery, and its relentless hope—showing how a single, impossible feat can bind a city’s many stories together.