Children's Crusade (Packer)

The Children's Crusade
Ann Packer, 2015
Scribner
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476710464


Summary
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 the family he has yet to create, Bill buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life seems compelling and answerable, and they marry and have four children.

Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, at a time when women chafed at the conventions imposed on them. She finds salvation in art, but the cost is high.

Thirty 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 and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family’s future.

One by one, the siblings take turns telling the story—Robert, a doctor like their father; Rebecca, a psychiatrist; Ryan, a schoolteacher; and James, the malcontent, the problem child, the only one who hasn’t settled down—their narratives interwoven with portraits of the family at crucial points in their history.

Reviewers have praised Ann Packer’s "brilliant ear for character" (New York Times Book Review), her "naturalist’s vigilance for detail, so that her characters seem observed rather than invented" (New Yorker), and the "utterly lifelike quality of her book’s everyday detail" (New York Times).

Her talents are on dazzling display in The Children’s Crusade, an extraordinary study in character, a rare and wise examination of the legacy of early life on adult children attempting to create successful families and identities of their own. This is Ann Packer’s most deeply affecting book yet. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1959
• Where—Stanford, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.F.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—James Michener Award, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Northern California


Ann Packer is an American novelist and short story writer, perhaps best known for her critically acclaimed first novel The Dive From Clausen's Pier. She is the recipient of a James Michener Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

Personal life
Packer was born in Stanford, California. She is the daughter of Stanford University professors Herbert Packer and Nancy (Huddleston) Packer.

Her mother was a student of novelist Wallace Stegner at the Stanford Writing Program; she later joined the Stanford faculty as professor of English and creative writing. Ann's father was on the faculty of Stanford Law School, where he highlighted the tensions between Due Process and Crime Control. In 1969, when Ann was 10 years old, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. He committed suicide three years later. Her brother, George Packer, is a novelist, journalist, and playwright.

Packer currently lives in Northern California with her two children.

Early career
Packer was an English major at Yale University, but only began writing fiction during her senior year. She moved to New York after college and took a job writing paperback cover copy at Ballantine Books. She attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop from 1986 to 1988, selling her first short story to The New Yorker a few weeks before receiving her M.F.A. degree.

In 1988 Packer moved to Madison, Wisconsin as a fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. During her two years in Wisconsin she published stories in literary magazines, including the story "Babies," which was included in the 1992 O. Henry Award prize stories collection. The New Yorker story, "Mendocino," became the title story of her first book, Mendocino and Other Stories, published by Chronicle Books in 1994.

Recent career
Packer spent almost 10 years writing The Dive From Clausen's Pier. Geri Thoma of the Elaine Markson Agency agreed to take on the book and sold it almost immediately to the editor Jordan Pavlin at Alfred A. Knopf. It was published in 2002 and became the first selection of the Good Morning America "Read This!" Book Club. It also received a Great Lakes Book Award, an American Library Association Award, and the Kate Chopin Literary Award. The novel was adapted into a 2005 cable television film. 

Packer’s next two books were also published by Knopf: a novel, Songs Without Words (2007), and a collection of short fiction, Swim Back to Me (2011). "Things Said or Done," one of the stories in Swim Back to Me, was included in the 2012 O. Henry Award prize stories collection. In 2015 another novel, The Children's Crusade, was published by Scribner.

In addition to fiction, Packer has written essays for the Washington Post, Vogue, Real Simple, and Oprah Magazine.  (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/13/2015.)

Book Reviews
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 Wink - New York Newsday


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.
Dan Cryer - San Francisco Chronicle


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


An absorbing novel which celebrates family even as it catalogs its damages.
People


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 - Lisa Shea


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


[W]ell-crafted family saga.... [Family members'] stories unfold through distinctive narrative styles...suited to the characters.... Packer is an accomplished storyteller whose characters are as real as those you might find around your dinner table. Readers will be taken with this vibrant novel.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [A]n engrossing story of the Blair family, their secrets, wounds, and struggles for second chances....  [A] flawless, compassionate portrayal of each family member at both their best and worst and shows what a strong hold the past has on the present. Literary fiction at its finest. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Library Journal


Told in the most elegant prose... extraordinarily compassionate... A masterful portrait of indelible family bonds. —Joanne Wilkson
Booklist


(Starred review.) Packer is an expert at complicated relationships; she likes to show more than two sides to every story. Who's responsible for the fracturing of the Blair family?... 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 Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Explain the significance of the title of the book. What is the "children’s crusade"? Did your interpretation of the title change as you read?

2. One of Rebecca’s friends tells her, "Your dad is like a mom" (p. 35). Discuss Bill and Penny’s parenting styles. What did you think of Penny as a mother?

3. Discuss the structure of The Children’s Crusade. What is the effect of allowing each of the Blair children to narrate parts of the story? Packer intersperses the chapters from the children’s points of view with chapters where events are recounted in the third person. Why do you think she chose to do so?

4. At the outset of The Children’s Crusade, all four of the Blair children were "united in [their] desire" to keep their childhood home, but they have their "separate rationalizations" (p. 160). Why are the children reluctant to sell the house? Do these rationalizations give you any insight into their personalities?

5. When Ryan and Sierra become romantically involved, the narrator tells the reader, "Robert had had a girlfriend for almost three months, but until today [Rebecca] hadn’t truly believed anyone in her family would ever love someone outside it" (p. 254). What does Ryan’s relationship with Sierra make Rebecca understand? Discuss the romantic relationships of the Blair children. How does their parents’ marriage influence those relationships?

6. During a Thanksgiving visit to Penny’s parents, the children put together a jigsaw puzzle that reveals an old photo of the family on the porch of Bill’s childhood home. The image "upset[s] her more than she’d expected" because Penny views it as "a warning about the danger of desire" (p. 228). How do Penny’s yearnings change as she settles into married life with Bill? Which of her longings do you think are the most dangerous? Do you agree with the sacrifices that Penny makes in order to realize her desires?

7. Rebecca’s analyst tells her, "We never get over it.... Having started out as children" (p. 171). What does she mean? Apply this statement to each of the Blair children. How have their childhood experiences shaped who they are as adults?

8. Were you surprised by Penny’s behavior at the Lawson recital? What prompts her to leave? Once the family is back home, "Bill saw that the children were defining the moment as a rescue operation rather than the act of capture it actually was" (p. 140). Do you think, like Bill, that Penny is being cornered or, like the children, that she’s being saved?

9. At Ryan’s birthday, James reacts very strongly to Penny’s assertion that Bill isn’t supportive of her work. Do you think that James is justified? Why do you think that James destroys Penny’s watercolor?

10. Penny believes she and James "ruin things" (p. 415). Do you agree with her? In what ways are they forces of destruction? How pronounced are the differences between Penny and James, particularly in the way that they view family obligations?

11. Describe the Barn. What prompts James to join it? How does being part of the Barn change James? Why do you think he is reluctant to tell his siblings about it?

12. What is the significance of the three capital Rs that Bill scratches into the concrete foundation of his shed? How does the presence of the carving bring Bill and Penny closer together? How does it comfort Robert?

13. Discuss Penny’s artwork. From the descriptions of her work and the reactions of others to it, do you think she’s a talented artist? The narrator says, "It was no wonder Penny was so protective of her art; she’d needed to protect it for most of her life" (p. 305). What has Penny needed to protect her artwork from? Why is creating art so important to Penny?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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