The Children’s Crusade
‘A tour de force family drama’ELLE
‘Bursting with poignancy… refreshing’ NEW YORKER
‘A provocative, dazzling novel’ CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE
From New York Times bestselling author Ann Packer, The Children’s Crusade explores the secrets, desires and remnant wounds of one Californian family over the course of five decades.
A riveting novel about how family molds us – for good and ill – and the grace that comes with forgiveness’PEOPLE MAGAZINE
Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of his future family, Bill buys the property and proposes to Penny Greenway, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life appeals to him. In less than a decade they have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, overwhelmed and undersatisfied, chafing at the conventions confining her.
Years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence sets off a struggle over the family’s future. One by one, they tell their stories.
‘An artful portrait of a California family’ VANITY FAIR
‘Packer is an expert American realist at every level’VULTURE
‘A beautiful novel that will stay with me’ ABRAHAM VERGHESE
'A tour de force family drama… Packer’s golden touch makes us care deeply for this memorable tribe' Elle -
'Bursting with poignancy… refreshing' New Yorker -
'An absorbing novel which celebrates family even as it catalogues its damages' People Magazine -
'Packer is an expert American realist at every level, from the interior monologue to the bird’s-eye view' Vulture -
'First-rate storytelling … Few writers are as emotionally astute at conveying subtle family ties as Packer' BBC -
'A complex, textured tapestry' Boston Globe -
'Packer flawlessly executes the most daring, difficult and exhilarating feat in the novelist's repertoire: to re-create the history of an era and a place through the history of one family, finding intimacy in the sweep of time and import in the nuance of everyday life, pulling it off with mastery, authority and all the passionate artistry that lovers of her work have come to expect' Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay -
'A coming-of-age tale of family as well as an American pastoral; the language is beautiful, painterly, even as it shows us how much of our adult identity has been fully formed in childhood … This is a beautiful novel that will stay with me' Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone -