Tightope Walker was first published in 1979
This book is wonderful as well. I have read it at least 3 or 4 times. “They’re going to kill me soon” is what the note said that shy Amelia Jones found in an old hurdy-gurdy or hand-organ. Armed only with the strange woman’s first name and the note written years before, Amelia begins a journey into the past, where nothing is the way it seems, where fear is second nature, and where dark secrets just might uncover murder and quite possibly her own.
Cast of Characters:
Amelia Jones, Proprieter Ebbtide Shop, Treasures & Junk
Dr. Merivale (Amelia’s psychiatrist)
Calley Monahan (roommate at Amelia’s Boardinghouse)
Amman Singh (Friend of Calley and storyteller)
Mr. Georgerakis (former owner of Ebbtide)
Oliver Keene (Painter – sold Daisy’s hurdy-gurdy to Mr. Georgerakis)
Joseph P. Osbourne (Graphologist)
Daisy (a.k.a. Doris Tucci – Ollie’s model former owner of the hurdy-gurdy)
Colonel Morgan Alcourt (Daisy’s “friend” former owner of the hurdy-gurdy or hand organ, collector)
Robert Lamandale (actor and former owner of the hurdy-gurdy)
Hannah Gruble Meerloo – Philanthropist and Author(Victim- Aunt to Robin and Nora )
Robin (mentioned in Hannah’s note a.k.a. Robert Gruble – stage name Robert Lamandale)
Nora (mentioned in Hannah’s note – a.k.a. Leonora Harrington)
Greenacres Psychiatric Hospital
Dr. Ffolks
Nurse Dawes
Nurse Jordan
In Carleton and Anglesworth Maine:
Angus Tuttle for U.S. Senate
Silas Whitney for U.S. Senate
Simon Pritchett – General Store Proprietor
Timothy Cox, M.D. – Doctor who signed Hannah’s Death Certificate
Judge Henry Tate – Judge who presided at her inquest
Bob Tuttle – Realtor
Garwin Mason – Attorney for Hannah’s estate
Lenora Harrington – Hannah’s niece – witness to Hannah’s last will
Hubert Holton – house guest – associate professor of Political Science – witness to Hannah’s last will
John Tuttle – a.k.a. Jay – Graduate student and summer chauffeur
Ms. Jane Morneau – Hannah’s housekeeper
Daniel Lipton – Witness to Hannah’s will
Mr. Gerard – Attorney at the Probate Hearing
Miss Edmonds – Mr. Mason’s Secretary
Judge Arthur Pimeroy – Probate Judge
From the Beginning of Chapter 1
“The important thing is to carry the sun with you, inside of you at every moment, against the darkness. For there will be a great and terrifying darkness.” From: The Maze in the Heart of the Castle (mentioned in Chapter 5 under the name Gruble or a.k.a. author Hannah Marie Gruble)
First Paragraph of Chapter 1
“Sometimes I think we’re all tightrope walkers suspended on a wire two thousand feet in the air, and so long as we never look down we’re okay, but some of us lose momentum and look down for a second and are never quite the same again: we know.”
Chapter 3
“I sometimes think if you harnessed enough compulsive people together their tensions could probably supply energy to a fair-sized city.”
“I’m very energy oriented. I think ecology is terribly important because this planet is getting so soiled, and you just can’t just use a vacuum cleaner on it.”
Chapter 4
“…but I think there must be a little actress in everyone, or else when one is terrified the adrenal juices start flowing like mad.”
Beginning of Part II
“Beware all greedy men, Colin, for who knows where they will stop? If they envy you your fine pendant of jade and feathers, who’s to know if they will bargain for it, snatch it, or kill you?” – The Magistrate, in The Maze in the Heart of the Castle.
Chapter 6
Quote Found on Hannah Meerloo’s Grave, “And so she went beyond the horizon into the country of the dawn..” Found in the closing lines of The Maze in the Heart of the Castle
Amman Singh – “A tree may be bent by harsh winds but is no less beautiful than the tree that grows in a sheltered nook, and often it bears the richer fruit…”
Chapter 7
Amelia quotes on what The Maze in the Heart of the Castle meant to her as a child “It gave me a certain feeling,” I said, choosing words cautiously, “and out of this feeling came the idea that maybe life isn’t meant to be easy, that it’s a kind of pilgrimage or testing ground, and we have to fight like warriors to live. I mean to live well.”
Chapter 13
“There would have to be something missing inside a murderer, a sense of connectedness to other people, so that he would see them as satellites to feed and nourish him, not as human beings just like himself.”
“In that moment I looked clearly and sanely into death and I was no longer afraid, I was angry.”
Chapter 14
“As for myself, now that my excursions into violence is over, I feel changed in a way that is not explainable except, perhaps, to say that I have moved from Victim to Survivor, a distance of no small import. Some things matter more to me now, and many things less, and the past not at all.”
“One day, poised on my tightrope, I hope to manage a glorious cartwheel, or at the very least a pirouette.”
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