Overview

‘A tour de force family drama’ ELLE ‘Bursting with poignancy’ NEW YORKER ‘Tender, absorbing’ CATHERINE NEWMAN ‘First-rate storytelling’ BBC ‘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. It is here that he will fall in love with Penny Greenway, build a home and raise a perfect family. Decades later, the lives of the three oldest Blair children are upended by the return of their younger brother, James – the wayward son – whose sudden presence forces to light the siblings' past rivalries and grievances, and sets off a struggle over the family's future. From New York Times bestselling author, Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade explores the secrets, desires and heartbreaks of one Californian family over the course of five decades. ‘This is a novel with something to teach about forgiving the people we love’ NEWSDAY ‘Superb … 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’ SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE ‘A beautiful novel that will stay with me’ ABRAHAM VERGHESE

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9780008735074

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Reviews

'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

Author Information

Ann Packer is the acclaimed author of two collections of short fiction, Swim Back to Me and Mendocino and Other Stories, and three internationally bestselling novels, The Children's Crusade, Songs Without Words, and The Dive from Clausen's Pier, which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award, among many other prizes and honours. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and in the O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies. Her novels have been published around the world. She lives in New York and Maine.

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