Eldest son Clem, the epitome of responsibility, is on his way home from college and seeking a reckoning with the father he has so long admired. Their middle son, Perry, is super smart and contemptuous of others he’s also one of the biggest pot dealers in school. Their daughter, Becky, the coolest girl in high school, becomes suddenly unmoored. The good reverend’s wife, Marion, is well aware of Russ’ infatuations and is filled with anger and self-loathing. The youth group is called Crossroads, and it’s just one of the many crossroads the family arrives at throughout this big, ambitious novel. The head of the family, Reverend Russ Hildebrandt, a middle-aged associate pastor, is frustrated that his career has stalled, humiliated that a young, hip minister has snatched away control of the church’s youth group that he founded, tired of his wife and marriage, and enamored of a widowed parishioner. The story opens just before Christmas 1971 and centers on the Hildebrandt family, who live in the “Crappier Parsonage” in New Prospect, a suburb of Chicago. Jonathan Franzen, one of our best chroniclers of suburban family life ( The Corrections, Freedom), does not disappoint with his terrific new novel, Crossroads.
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