Crossroads

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Sections 1-2

Part 1, Sections 3-4

Part 1, Section 5

Part 1, Sections 6-9

Part 1, Sections 10-12

Part 1, Sections 13-19

Part 2, Section 20, Pages 373-450

Part 2, Section 20, Pages 450-479

Part 2, Sections 21-22

Part 2, Sections 23-24

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 1, Sections 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Advent”

Part 1, Section 1 Summary

Russ Hildebrandt is an associate minister at First Reformed Presbyterian Church in New Prospect, a fictional Chicago suburb. He begins his day of ministerial duties in December 1971 with excitement. One of his parishioners, Frances Cottrell, has agreed to accompany him to do odd jobs for a nearby church in a predominantly Black neighborhood, even though her first time performing this service weeks earlier ended poorly. Although Russ is married and has four children, he finds himself more and more attracted to Frances, a widow with two children.

The first time Frances accompanied Russ and several women from First Reformed to the majority-Black church, she inadvertently caused a scene. She struck up a conversation with a teen boy named Ronnie, who has a developmental disability and comes by the church often when his mother is not sober. When Ronnie’s mother later showed up, she angrily told Frances to stay away from Ronnie. Russ managed to de-escalate the situation, but the minister of the church, Theo Crenshaw, was displeased. On the ride home, Frances admitted that she could not help but feel afraid in the majority-Black neighborhood. Russ persuaded her to give it another chance, explaining how important it is to learn to understand other people’s perspectives.

After this incident, Russ arranged to make another trip to the church, this time with just himself and Frances. In the novel’s present, he waits for her to arrive for the trip in his office, but he takes a long route to get there, wanting to avoid walking past the office of the youth pastor, Rick Ambrose. Although the narrator does not yet explain why, Russ hates Rick, who humiliated him years ago. To Russ’s dismay, he soon hears Frances’s voice coming from Rick’s office, glowingly telling the youth pastor how much her son loves his youth group, Crossroads. Russ’s spirits revive, however, when he meets her in the parking lot and she cheerily compliments his sheepskin jacket.

Part 1, Section 2 Summary

Section 2 shifts perspectives from Russ to Russ’s third child, Perry. The sections of the novel continuously shift to different Hildebrandt family members’ perspectives, except for the youngest son, Judson. Perry, a highly intelligent high school sophomore, has recently made a resolution to become a good person—or, at least, a better person.

This resolution came about because of Perry’s involvement in Crossroads. In his normal social circle at school, Perry has mild popularity by virtue of being Becky’s younger brother, as Becky is one of the most popular girls at school. This popularity-by-association has allowed Perry to become friends with older boys who introduced him to marijuana. He now smokes frequently and even sells marijuana to students as young as seventh grade.

When Perry joined Crossroads, he was surprised to find that one day Ambrose and his peers staged an intervention. When he reacted with genuine emotion, breaking down into tears, he was surprised to find that rather than being mocked, he was welcomed and applauded for this reaction. Because of this, he came to conceive of Crossroads as a game where players advance by sharing openly and emotionally, by confronting one another with honesty, and by extending kindness to the lowly unpopular kids. The rules are the opposite of the normal social rules that govern his daily life in high school.

He was irritated, however, when Becky suddenly joined Crossroads one day and her popularity in the group quickly trumped his own. The siblings, who have never been close, unhappily drew each other’s names out of a hat for a sharing exercise at one meeting. Taking the exercise seriously, they each admitted what was holding them back from having a closer relationship. Perry said it seems like Becky hates him, while Becky said he always acts smarter and superior to everyone else.

Perry takes his sister’s words to heart, leading to his resolution to be a better person. As part of this resolution, he plans to sell the remainder of his marijuana stash, along with some Quaaludes, and use the money to buy his family Christmas presents, including a camera that his younger brother Judson admired in a shop window days before. When he approaches his friend Ansel to sell the drugs, Ansel is upset; he would have just loaned Perry the money for Christmas presents had Perry asked. Although Perry leaves with the money in hand, he feels discouraged that his resolution is already off to a bad start: He cannot seem to predict what actions will hurt people’s feelings.

When he gets to the store to buy Judson a camera, the shop owner no longer has it in stock, but he does have a nicer $48 camera. Perry purchases the camera, excited to give Judson a nice gift. When he walks out of the shopping center, he sees his father in the car with Frances Cottrell, her arm casually draped over his father’s headrest, and Perry instinctively feels that he has caught his father doing something wrong.

Part 1, Sections 1-2 Analysis

The novel’s opening section shows Russ Hildebrandt’s contradicting impulses. Some readers might be surprised by Russ’s first thoughts in the novel; despite his status as a minister, he is hardly conflicted at the thought of starting an affair with Frances. The reader gets no indication that Russ has waited this long because he feels guilt over breaking the vows of monogamous marriage he has made before his wife and, in his eyes, God. The only thing holding him back is lack of confidence. He shows a callous disregard for how such an affair might affect his wife or his children.

At the same time, Russ shows a genuinely progressive attitude toward race for a white man living in a white suburb in 1971. Rather than thinking of himself as Theo Crenshaw’s benefactor who has earned the right to impose his will on Theo’s church, he has adapted to Theo’s preferences for their partnership. Similarly, while he could have ended Frances’s argument with Ronnie’s mother and never said another word about the subject, he tries to open Frances’s mind to having more humility toward a community about which she knows almost nothing. While Russ may get an ego boost from acting like a hip, progressive Christian, he does live up to some—though not all—of his ideals.

Meanwhile, Russ’s son Perry struggles throughout the book with what it means to be a moral person. When readers first meet Perry, he has just decided to become “a good person,” but he cannot figure out how one does so. As a gifted boy with high intelligence, his ability to analyze a situation from every angle sometimes interferes with his efforts. He is much more comfortable dealing with systems, procedures, and logic than with feelings. His whole approach to Crossroads is to use emotion as a piece in a game of gaining status within the group. Later, the only way he can think to prove love to his family members is buying presents. He realizes that Becky’s accusation at Crossroads is accurate—he does think of himself as superior to other people b, even his own father, because of his intelligence. But as the reader gradually sees, his brain sometimes works against him, especially when his genetic predisposition to addiction and mental health experiences begins to take over his life.