The Children's Crusade

A Novel

By: Ann Packer

Narrated by: Cotter Smith, Frederick Weller, Thomas Sadoski, Marin Ireland, Santino Fontana

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).

A First Person Character Story

This book was not for me. Because of this, I can't state that it was bad or good; I can only state that I did not like it. The story unfolds through the eyes of a melancholy man that looks to his past and present while describing what he has seen, sees, and feels.

The problem is that it is not very enjoyable to see life through the eyes of a desolate man.and reading a chapter in a desolate man's voice becomes a sing-song drone. I only made it through three hours. The book may have gotten better as the main character got better, but I just could not listen any longer.

Children deserve care.

When Bill Blair buys a piece of land in 1954 in what will become Silicon Valley, complete with a towering California oak, he sets this family drama in motion. Bill, a pediatrician whose motto is “Children deserve care”, dreamed of having his own children, and soon marries Penny. They build a house (which figures largely in the novel), have “the three Rs”, Robert, Rebecca, and Ryan, but when unplanned James is born, and the family begins to fail.

“Think how much we love the three we have,' Bill said when, newly and accidentally pregnant with James, she wept and wept. 'I'll die,' she said, and he smiled an indulgent smile that chilled her."

James is a wild child, but it wasn't clear to me if this was his personality, the result of the way he is treated by the rest of the family, or a combination of factors. When Penny is overwhelmed and can't control him, she distances herself from the family, both emotionally and physically. She begins this process by doing craft projects in the house, calls herself an artist when she uses a shed down the hill from the house as her studio, and eventually moves into the shed. The title comes from the heartbreaking children's crusade to try and think of things that their absent and uncaring mother might like to do with them, to spend time with them. Their stories are told in multiple first-person perspectives from the children and the adults they become, along with third-person sections recounting this sad family history.

While I was interested in reading the thoughts from the siblings in the first person, I think the story suffered because we are not privy to any of Penny's perspectives. I don't understand how she became an artist, other than doing crafts with clothespins and calling it art. To me, she was selfish, apathetic, and later downright cruel when she exploited James through her art. Even though Penny had once created a scrapbook about her perfect family of two boys and one girl, she did not come to understand that she was not cut out for motherhood until it was too late, and she seemed to simply place her needs for artistic time and furthering her imagined artistic career above everyone else in the family, without guilt or regret.

I wish there had been more from Penny, but I also wish there had been less detail and rambling in the first half. The book became a bit of a slog for me, but I am glad I finished because the last quarter was some of the best stuff. I enjoy listening to good family sagas, but The Children's Crusade was more of a family drama. While I could appreciate parts of it, I didn't find much reading enjoyment.

Well crafted story

Well done, great use of detail. Packer does an incredible job of exploring different characters' psyches. Speaks very well to the different periods in which it takes place. The tone is a little low, and sad, and if you're not intimately familiar with the part of the Bay Area in which it is set, I'm not sure you would find it compelling.

Family saga

Well written story of the life of a Silicon Valley family and how they cope with life. The youngest son is a bit of an outcast from his family taking after his artist mom who actually sold odd bits of art! He is really ok just not driven like his older sibs. Ryan the next brother is a bit of a hippie but still teaches and has goals but James is a wanderer..
Families are so divided at times and this story mirrors real life in many ways. Made me think!

enjoyed listening to the story.

enjoyed the story. Bill did his best to show his kids how much they were loved unfortunately he did not stand up to his selfish wife.