In a tale set in Manhattan of 1974, a radical young Irish monk struggles with personal demons while making his home among Bronx prostitutes, a group of mothers is separated by personal differences in spite of shared grief over their lost Vietnam soldier sons, and a young grandmother attempts to prove her worth by soliciting men at the side of her teenage daughter, and a man walks a wire strung between towers of the World Trade Center. Winner of the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction.  (NYC214, $15.00)