The Children's Crusade - Softcover

"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

"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."--Lisa Shea "Elle "

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

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

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

"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."--Marion Winik "Newsday "

"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."--Mameve Medwed "The Boston Globe "

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

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

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

From New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Ann Packer, a “tour de force family drama” (Elle) that explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one California 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).