Tightrope-walker

Mr. Farini [i.e., William Leonard Hunt], the celebrated tightrope-walker, and rival of [Charles] Blondin, advertised that he would carry his wife across the rope stretched from one side of the ring to the other, at a height of about sixty feet, upon his back—a feat he had performed in other places.

We saw where the great tightrope-walker Karl Wallenda scaled the canyon on a tightrope back in 1970.

The novel, which went on to win both a National Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, presents several apparently disparate stories while a tightrope-walker modeled after Philippe Petit tiptoes between the twin towers on a wire.