Saturday Breakfast Book Club (In-Person Session): "Crossroads"

Join us for our Saturday Breakfast Book Club! Each month, we'll read one of the novels & memoirs the New York Times designates as its "Most Notable Books" from the preceding year while enjoying coffee and baked goods. We will meet at 10 am every fourth Saturday to discuss the book; patrons have the option of attending virtually or in person.

Our selection for January 2023 is the 2021 novel Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen, which follows the Hildebrandt family in Chicago mostly over the course of one day. 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.

Copies of the novel will be made available at the library's Circulation Desk. Please sign up below to participate in this month's discussion!