Let the Great World Spin is a novel by Colum McCann set mainly in New York City in the United States. The book won the 2009 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and the 2011 International Dublin Literary Award, one of the most lucrative literary prizes in the world. Its title comes from the poem "Locksley Hall" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Plot The events of the story are told in a largely non-linear fashion, with several different narrators telling the story from different perspectives. The story is interspersed with fictionalized accounts of Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk across the Twin Towers, the date on which the two main events of the novel occur: a fatal car crash and a trial. In 1974, an Irishman named Ciaran travels to New York City to see his younger brother, Corrigan, a devout Jesuit monk who has moved to the projects of the Bronx. Corrigan works at a nursing home and has befriended several of the prostitutes working around his apartment, leaving his door unlocked so they can use his bathroom despite the danger this frequently puts him in. Ciaran meets two of the prostitutes, Tillie and her daughter Jazzlyn, who has two young children of her own. After Ciaran notices bruises on the inside of Corrigan's arm, he begins to suspect that he is using drugs. When he confronts him about this, Corrigan reveals that he is not using drugs but is in reality suffering from TTP. This was brought to his attention by Adelita, a nurse he met at the nursing home and has fallen in love with. This comes into direct conflict with the vows of chastity he took as a teenager and his sworn devotion to God, and he struggles to reconcile these beliefs with his love for Adelita. Several months after Ciaran initially arrives in New York City, there is an incident in which many of the prostitutes are arrested, and Tillie and Jazzlyn are held in jail over an outstanding warrant for robbery. During the arrest, Jazzlyn drops a keychain with photos of her two children, which Corrigan picks up, intending to return it. The following day - 7 August 1974, the day of Philipe Petit's tightrope walk - Corrigan asks Ciaran to take over his shift at the nursing home for the day while he goes to pick up Jazzlyn from court after her acquittal. Ciaran agrees,