About This Book
Adam's Chair is a trilogy of short novels set in Waltham, Massachusetts. It opens with a day in April 1981. The shuttle Columbia orbits above, while below, in Waltham—city of immigrants, electronic engineers, and madmen released from the Metropolitan State Hospital—Priscilla, resident of a housing project, rides her bike at dawn to her work as a home health aide. Her first stop is the home of three elderly sisters, where she tends the eldest, Adie, taking her pulse and assuring her that she's still alive. Thus the day begins. Later, the clients of the Sunshine Club arrive to plan a party for Adie's hundredth birthday. The shuttle sends down messages. President Reagan recovers from an assassination attempt. Priscilla bathes another client, whose stately pace makes her late for Eulalie, whose husband Alcide has run away. Priscilla chases him on her bike, but he has defecated in the street again and is taken to the police station. She returns to accompany the sisters to the Sunshine Club. A fish is being caught off the Gold Star Mothers' Bridge. The Mayor arrives for Adie's party. A parachutist lands in Leary Park. A burial takes place from the French Church, attended by Eulalie who wanders through the cemetery's ethnic neighborhoods, which mirror the city's own. Henrietta Rose from the Sunshine Club sets up the coffee for the AA meeting in the French Church bingo hall. Upstairs a supper of beans and franks is served for the homeless. Later in the evening Priscilla puts the sisters to bed and discusses interstellar travel with Megan. On the way home she's knocked off her bicycle by a white Buick that doesn't stop, and spends the night in the hospital. in an exalted state over her unlikely survival. The Professor and The Maggot , two Knights of the Road have a nightcap under the railroad trestle. Dawn comes. The shuttle Columbia lands. Priscilla's vitals are pronounced normal. Megan wakes and opens an old copy of Opera News to a description of Fernando Corena descending on the stage of the old Metropolitan in a splendid hot air balloon. Two of this day's cast of characters: Rosa an illegal Honduran home health aide, and Henrietta Rose, an elderly client of the Sunshine Club and former drunk, demanded their stories be told at length so these make up other two novellas of the trilogy. .
