Crossroads (Event Ticket and Book)

Jonathan Franzen's gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.
 
It's December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless — unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem's sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who's been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

Jonathan Franzen's novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.

A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen's gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.

"With its dazzling style and tireless attention to the machinations of a single family, Crossroads is distinctly Franzen-esque, but it represents a marked evolution... It’s an electrifying examination of the irreducible complexities of an ethical life." Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"[A] superb domestic epic... Franzen’s faith in fiction as a means to get at questions of goodness and righteousness is unshakable." Mark Athitakis, USA Today (Four out of Four Stars)

"This is peak Franzen, with richly created characters, conflicts and plot... The writing is a marvel." Rob Merrill, Associated Press

"Excellent... With Marion, [Franzen] reminds us that he’s actually one of our great novelists of female fury... Jonathan Franzen really is one of the great novelists of his generation. Crossroads stands ready and willing to prove it." Constance Grady, Vox

“Soulful, funny and so sharply observed it hurts... Crossroads gets this wildly ambitious [trilogy] off to a glorious start.” Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

“A mellow, marzipan-hued ’70s-era heartbreaker. Crossroads is warmer than anything [Franzen has] yet written, wider in its human sympathies, weightier of image and intellect.” Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Superb... Franzen has created characters of almost uncanny authenticity. Is there anything more a great novelist ought to do?” Laura Miller, Slate

"Crossroads is Franzen’s greatest and most perfect novel to date.” Bookforum

“Funny, sad, [and] unputdownable.” Vanity Fair

“A compelling examination of faith, privilege and ambition.” Time

"[Franzen] imbues his books with big ideas, in this case about responsibility to family, self, God, country, and one's fellow man, among other matters... Franzen's intensely absorbing novel is amusing, excruciating, and at times unexpectedly uplifting—in a word, exquisite." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Franzen returns with a sweeping and masterly examination of the shifting culture of early 1970s America, the first in a trilogy... Throughout, Franzen exhibits his remarkable ability to build suspense through fraught interpersonal dynamics. It's irresistible." Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[A] masterful, Tolstoian saga... Franzen adroitly portrays eternal generational conflicts... This masterpiece of social realism vividly captures each character's internal conflicts as a response to and a reflection of societal expectations, while Franzen expertly explores the fissions of domestic life, mining the rich mineral beneath the sediments of familial discord. In this first volume of a promised trilogy, Franzen is in rarified peak form." Booklist (starred review)

Jonathan Franzen is the author of Purity, The Corrections, and Freedom, among other novels, and works of nonfiction including Farther Away and The Kraus Project, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the German Akademie der Künste, and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.