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.

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 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.

From the New York Times bestselling author of UNSHELTERED and FLIGHT BEHAVIOR comes a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity.

From the New York Times bestselling author of UNSHELTERED and FLIGHT BEHAVIOR comes a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity.

From the New York Times bestselling author of UNSHELTERED and FLIGHT BEHAVIOR, a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity.

“Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose.”

DEMON COPPERHEAD is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It’s the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote DAVID COPPERFIELD from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. DEMON COPPERHEAD speaks for a new generation of lost boys and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.