Join us Thursday, October 7th at 8pm for a joint event with Left Bank Books, Anderson's Bookshop, Literati Bookstore, and Magers and Quinn Booksellers featuring author Jonathan Franzen discussing his new book, Crossroads with moderator author Kathy Wang. This virutal event will be hosted via YouTube, and admittance to the event only requires a purchase of the book. A link to the event will be emailed to you the day of the event. Mark your calendars! Signed copies are available while supplies last!
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- Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom, and Purity, and five works of nonfiction, most recently Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.
- Kathy Wang is the author of Family Trust and Impostor Syndrome. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School, and lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two children.
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.
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.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
The debut novel of New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Franzen, the author of Crossroads, The Twenty-Seventh City is “a startling, scathing first novel about American ambition, power, politics, money, corruption and apathy” (People).
From the author of Crossroads and The Corrections
New York Times Bestselling Author
National Book Award Winner
“Jonathan Franzen, an abundantly gifted writer, has even more nerve than talent” (The New York Times), and he refuses to play it safe in this bold, layered ecological thriller.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Winner of the John Gardner Fiction Award • A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Notable Book
A Good Morning America Buzz Pick * Named A Best Book of Summer by Entertainment Weekly, New York Post, Buzzfeed, TheSkimm, PopSugar, Bustle, HelloGiggles, Ms. Magazine, Oprah Daily, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Lit Hub * Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by The Millions, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, Crimereads
“A globe-trotting, whirlwind, tragi-comic family saga that wrings tears from absurdity and laughter from loss. A joy to read from start to finish.”
— Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less, winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize