The Children's Crusade - by Ann Packer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the author of the Oprah Book Club Pick Some Bright Nowhere, a "tour de force family drama" (Elle) that explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one family, over the course of five decades.

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, which reveal Packer's "great compassion for her characters, with their ancient injuries, their blundering desires. The way she tangles their perspectives perfectly, painfully captures the tumult of selves within a family" (MORE Magazine).

Reviewers have praised Ann Packer's "brilliant ear for character" (The New York Times Book Review) and her "naturalist's vigilance for detail, so that her characters seem observed rather than invented" (The New Yorker). Her talents are on dazzling display in The Children's Crusade, "an absorbing novel that celebrates family even as it catalogs its damages" (People, Book of the Week). This is a "superb storyteller" (San Francisco Chronicle), Ann Packer's most deeply affecting book yet, "tragic and utterly engrossing" (O, The Oprah Magazine).

Review Quotes

"The Children's Crusade is an extraordinary tale of a physician, his wife and their four children. Set in Northern California, it is 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. Ann Packer's eye for detail, her genius at evoking an era with such faithfulness, and her mastery of story make us identify with and deeply care for her characters. This is a beautiful novel that will stay with me." --Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water

"In The Children's Crusade, Ann 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 & Clay

"Do our childhood experiences determine our destinies? In shimmering prose and with exceptional wisdom, Ann Packer examines the life of a California family, laying bare the relationships between brother and sister, parent and child, while at the same time revealing the ways in which the past casts both shadow and light on the present. The Children's Crusade is a provocative, dazzling novel from a world-class fiction writer." --Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train

"Bursting with poignancy... refreshing." --The New Yorker

"A tour de force family drama... An engrossing saga... Packer brilliantly constructs the siblings' narratives with both an appealing lightness and an arresting gravitas... Packer's golden touch makes us care deeply for this memorable tribe." --Elle

"An artful portrait of a California family." --Vanity Fair

"As the details accumulate, as each character's story builds, Packer's writing gains depth and power. By the end, all the separate threads weave a complex, textured tapestry. What a gift to the reader, who will certainly recognize and identify with the novel's universal themes of those knotted ties that bind, the varied meanings of home, and, in particular, the many ways the child is father to the man." --The Boston Globe

"Graceful, poignant... With her warm, nuanced portrayal of a family and its foibles, Packer delivers." --Miami Herald

"Packer's portrayal of one family's breakdown is tragic and utterly engrossing." --"O," The Oprah Magazine

"A more ambitious work that succeeds beautifully. The beauty comes from the rich characterizations that make each of the Blairs spring to life. We do not like them all equally, but ultimately we come to know them equally... Packer's dissection of domestic life reminds me of her elders in the field Anne Tyler and Louise Erdrich. But I've rarely read a novel so astute about the jumble of love and respect, rivalry and envy, empathy and scorn that makes up family dynamics. Packer is also a superb storyteller. The Children's Crusade is as much plot-driven as character-driven. From its opening pages, the book seduces us into a world far from the present era, glides through ensuing decades, and finally drops us off in the 21st century." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A sublime and intelligent exploration of one family and its mythology of sorts... Ms. Packer is a wonderful portraitist, allowing childhood moments to unfold in all their riveting innocence (including a breathtakingly perfect, terribly sad music recital scene) and following the family as choices beget choices and lives intertwine or unwind... This entertaining, poetic novel layers a multitude of human contradictions, and what is most moving is that even with so much hostility and melancholy, the family story here is one of love. It is about how we return again and again to understand, to make things right, even as we seek to move on from ancient pain." --Pittsburgh Post Gazette

"Tender, absorbing... Packer has great compassion for her characters, with their ancient injuries, their blundering desires. The way she tangles their perspectives perfectly, painfully captures the tumult of selves within a family." --Catherine Newman, MORE

"Packer is an expert American realist at every level, from the interior monologue to the bird's-eye view." --Vulture

"An absorbing novel which celebrates family even as it catalogs its damages." --People (Book of the Week)

"Absorbing... the novel spreads its branches widely... fully formed heartbreaking portrayals." --USA TODAY (4 stars out of four)

"The renegade mother, Penny, and the prodigal son, James, propel the novel to a heart-tugging ending... smart... explores what makes a family jell or fall apart, and how people choose other, more 'intentional, ' communities." --Kansas City Star

"First-rate storytelling... Few writers are as emotionally astute at conveying subtle family ties as Packer." --BBC

"Psychologically acute... provocative... Packer shows how unhappiness and happiness, selfishness and kindness, ricochet in complicated ways through relationships. This is a novel with something to teach about forgiving the people we love." --Newsday

"Packer has made complicated families her specialty... engaging writing, sense of place... The Children's Crusade [is] a journey worth taking." --The Christian Science Monitor

"Told in the most elegant prose... extraordinarily compassionate... A masterful portrait of indelible family bonds." --Booklist (starred review)

"Packer is an expert at complicated relationships... Beautifully precise... When you read Packer, you'll know you're in the hands of a writer who knows what she's doing. A marvelously absorbing novel." --Kirkus (starred review)

"A flawless, compassionate portrayal... literary fiction at its finest." --Library Journal (starred review)

"Well-crafted... Packer is anaccomplished storyteller whose characters are as real as you might find aroundyour dinner table. Readers will be taken with this vibrant novel." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Ann Packer is the author of six works of fiction, including the bestselling novels The Children's Crusade and The Dive from Clausen's Pier, which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award, among many other prizes and honors. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and in the O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies, and her novels have been published around the world. She divides her time among New York, the Bay Area, and Maine. Her most recent book is Some Bright Nowhere.