Crossroads Summary

Jonathan Franzen’s novel *Crossroads* is the first volume of a planned trilogy, published in 2021. Set in the fictional Chicago suburb of New Prospect during the early 1970s, it follows the Hildebrandt family across a single winter, organized around the youth group at their church, also called Crossroads. The church’s charismatic youth pastor, Rick Ambrose, runs the group with an intense, confession-driven style that promises spiritual renewal while stoking rivalry and resentment among its teenage members. Russ Hildebrandt, the family patriarch and a church associate pastor, has been pushed out of leadership at Crossroads by Ambrose, leaving him adrift amid envy and marital dissatisfaction. His wife Marion carries a buried past and private compulsions she conceals from her family. Their four children each become distinct centers of the narrative: Clem, the eldest, wrestles with guilt over his college deferment during Vietnam; Becky, a popular senior, is drawn toward both the youth group and a charismatic friend; Perry, a brilliant, drug-selling sophomore, treats morality as a ledger of debts and atonements; and Judson, the youngest, drifts at the edges of the family crisis. Franzen alternates closely among these perspectives, using the Crossroads meetings and the approaching holidays to examine inherited faith, self-justification, and the pull between selfishness and genuine connection. The novel’s structure is further shaped by the characters’ attempts at moral reckoning, particularly Perry’s account-keeping and the adults’ buried secrets, while the title points both to the church group and to the choices each Hildebrandt faces. The book ends at a threshold rather than a resolution, opening the way for later volumes.