The aerialist
Subtitle: a novel
By: by Richard Schmitt.
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Sewanee writers' series
Publisher: Overlook Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Woodstock, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 295
Subjects: Circus performers -- Fiction; Aerialists -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction; Circus -- Fiction; Venice (Fla.) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: "On the edge of the gritty town of Venice, Florida, lie the winterquarters - a circus in repose. One day Gary - who hasn't cared much what sort of job he's had - finds himself signing on as a circus hand.".

"Everyone has seen or heard of the wirewalker, the trapeze artist, and the clown, but there are others: the "twenty-four-hour man" who arrives in a town first to post arrows that point the way to the lot; the "bullhands" who remove the elephants' excrement out from under their tumultuous bodies; the "butchers" who distract the audience from the wonders on stage so that they might purchase cotton candy or a plastic ray-gun; the "animal people" who tend to the animals and keep to themselves.

Gary becomes instantly familiar with this new life - riding in the circus train from one town to the next in the odd hours of the night. It is a life for which he has abandoned everything and nothing at all."--BOOK JACKET.