Walking on air
By: R.S. Jones.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 253
Subjects: Sick -- Psychology -- Fiction
Description: In his new novel, Walking on Air, R. S. Jones has produced a gripping meditation on the bonds of love and trust in the face of shattering crisis. William Addams is dying. Controlling, mercurial, estranged from his family, he is consumed by the fear that he'll be abandoned as his disease careens out of his control. To avoid this, he focuses his considerable attention on Henry and Susan, his closest friends, the only people to whom his care can fall.

It has always been William's desperate hope that the bonds of friendship will prove to be as durable as any family ties, yet he cannot rid himself of the dread that Susan and Henry will leave him. What he wants is for their faithfulness to last until they take him home to his beloved house to die.

But as William's condition worsens, it becomes apparent that his expectations of devotion and loyalty involve not simply a loving commitment but the virtual handing over of his friends' vitality and independence; indeed, William covets their very lives.