who were chris parents , what did they do , and how was their relationship ?

Walt McCandless was Chris’s father. Walt is an eminent aerospace engineer and the father of eight children from two marriages. He is fifty-six at the time of Chris’s death. He is taciturn, passionate and stubborn, much like his son, and also brilliant, musically talented, with a mercurial temper. Chris was horrified to learn his father was having an affair with a woman in another town. This made a permanent wedge between them and may have contributed to Chris's abdication of society.

Chris and Carine’s mother, Billie is a very petite woman who meets Walt while working as a secretary at the company he works for before they split off to start their own company together. Like Walt and her children, she is very passionate, with a strong temper.