Get exactly 100 words into Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Crossroads, and you know something’s up with the protagonist. Russ Hildebrandt is an assistant pastor at First Reformed Church in suburban Illinois. It’s Christmas 1971, and Russ can’t think of a better gift than spending four hours alone with Frances Cottrell, one of his parishioners. Unfortunately, Russ is married, though unhappily, to Marion, a dutiful but erratic woman with a secret of her own. As the Hildebrandts’ four children—Clem, Becky, Perry, and Judson, the baby of the family—are introduced, the drama is layered on. Clem is a student whose college deferment saved him from going to war in Vietnam, but he’s starting to question whether dodging service was right. Becky has inherited an enviable sum of money from their eccentric aunt—and no one else in the family received anything. Perry is a genius who sells drugs. He joins the church’s youth group, Crossroads, to try and reform himself. It’s the same youth group that Russ once led. Crossroads, out October 5, is the first volume in a trilogy from the novelist, who was raised in Webster Groves. That trilogy, A Key to All Mythologies, will follow three generations—and the country’s changing culture—up to the 2020s. If the rich descriptions of the characters and their worlds don’t hook you in the first book’s 600 pages, the dilemmas they face will make you long for volume 2.
Franzen will discuss Crossroads during a private online event sponsored in part by Left Bank Books at 7 p.m. October 7.
