Crossroads

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Sections 1-2

Part 1, Sections 3-4

Part 1, Section 5

Part 1, Sections 6-9

Part 1, Sections 10-12

Part 1, Sections 13-19

Part 2, Section 20, Pages 373-450

Part 2, Section 20, Pages 450-479

Part 2, Sections 21-22

Part 2, Sections 23-24

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 2, Sections 21-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Easter”

Part 2, Section 21 Summary

Contrary to his promise to his family, Perry is still using drugs, but he has gone from frequent marijuana use to amphetamine addiction to cocaine addiction. At first, he managed to fund his drug purchases with the money from Aunt Shirley’s will, which Becky decided to split with her brothers. He quickly ran through his $3,000, and then proceeded to steal Clem’s share. He has a plan to replace the money before anyone notices: On the Crossroads trip, he will find a connection in Arizona from whom to buy peyote wholesale, then sell it at a high markup to his Midwestern peers who have never had access to it.

Perry’s peers notice his erratic behavior and speech during the Crossroads trip, but no one confronts him about it. During some free time after working one day, he finds some young men playing basketball near the work site and asks them if they know where he can buy peyote. They schedule a late-night pickup time to take him to a dealer.

The car ride passes in a whirl, the driver speeding down the road at breakneck pace, which feels even more dangerous to Perry since he took several hits of cocaine before getting in the car. When they arrive at their destination, the men tell Perry to give them his money so they can approach the dealer, who does not trust strangers. He waits in the car until they return soon after and say the dealer wants to meet him. He walks inside, but the building is empty. Suddenly, he hears the sound of a car peeling away. The men have robbed and abandoned him.

Perry remains optimistic, convinced by this point that he has godlike intelligence and will figure a way out of this conundrum. He begins the long walk back to the work site, taking additional snorts of cocaine as he goes. Eventually, he reaches a state of near hallucination, barely able to make sense of his surroundings, cognizant only of vague shapes and lights in the distance. He approaches a farm building and breaks into it, needing warmth. When he sees gasoline and matches, he plans to burn a wooden pallet to make a small fire, but accidentally sends the whole building up in flames.

Part 2, Section 22 Summary

The purported reason for Marion and Judson’s trip to Los Angeles is to see Marion’s sickly Uncle Jimmy. However, Marion plans to see Bradley Grant; she has looked up his address, written to him, and arranged a visit. He is now twice divorced.

Several days into the trip, Marion leaves Judson with Jimmy and Jimmy’s long-time partner, Antonio, to go to Bradley’s house. The moment Bradley steps outside to greet her, she regrets coming. While she feels good about her own appearance, having lost a significant amount of weight in preparation for this reunion, he looks older than she expected. Suddenly, she remembers that her obsession was always built more on mental health experiences than genuine attraction.

The visit proceeds awkwardly, with Bradley showing Marion the garden in painstaking detail and trotting out pictures of his grandchildren. Her overwhelming feeling is a realization that the Bradley in front of her is nothing like the Bradley she imagined, and she has no desire to reignite any kind of romance with this man. She explains that what she really needed was to get over their affair, and now she has. Although she senses that the part of her brain that developed an obsession with Bradley may always be there, she does not need to act on it and can now resume her life in peace.

When she returns to Jimmy’s house, Russ has left a series of urgent messages. She calls him back and learns that Perry has been arrested. He has a felony drug conviction, burned down a Navajo farm building, and tried to kill himself. He is currently heavily sedated in a hospital. Listening to this overwhelming news, she experiences a strange sense of calm, sensing that God is finally punishing her for everything she did in her past. Now the worst has finally happened, she can finally stop looking over her shoulder for future punishment.

Marion arrives in Albuquerque, after sending Judson on a separate flight to Illinois where Becky will pick him up. Russ explains that between paying Perry’s lawyer and replacing the farm building, he hardly knows how they will manage, even with the money from Aunt Shirley’s will that he thinks is still in his sons’ bank accounts.

Russ and Marion stay at a motel for the night to break up the long drive to the jail. He confesses that he was having sex with Frances Cottrell at the moment Perry was enacting his plans, which surely means he is the most to blame. He tells her he could never love Frances now, not after what happened while they were having sex. While Marion is angry, she also has a strange sense of sexual desire which seems never to have gone away from her former anticipation of reigniting the Bradley affair. She initiates sex, and when they finish, Russ sobs that he does not deserve her and commits himself anew to his family.

In response, she tells him the full truth of her past that she has always kept from him, including her family’s mental health history. She concludes that clearly this is the reason for Perry’s predicament, more than some cosmic retribution for Russ’s affair with Frances. Eventually, they agree that they both bear responsibility but plan to change their ways and face the future together, finding joy in any small moments they can.

Part 2, Sections 21-22 Analysis

Section 21 is the novel’s final section from Perry’s point of view. While he gets psychological treatment after the events of this section, readers never get to see his response to that treatment from his own perspective; it is only talked about by other characters. This narrative choice mirrors the mental state that readers learn Perry is in post-treatment. He complains about the treatments affecting the quality of his thinking, so it is fitting that the last section from his perspective is the last time he feels in control of his mind and his story—even if that control is an illusion fueled by cocaine.

While Russ persisted through the awkwardness of his sexual encounter with Frances to keep believing he was in love with her afterward, Marion quickly realizes upon seeing Bradley that her fantasies were never really about him. Since their original affair, Bradley has grown into a senior citizen while Marion is still middle-aged; the lure of the “older man” has now worn off, and now Bradley seems feeble while she is still in the prime of her life. His physical appearance as a visibly older man is an obvious sign that their relationship never had a healthy, loving dynamic. It was predicated on him taking advantage of her youth, ignorance, and instability, even if he thought he was truly in love.

When Marion is pulled out of her foray into the past by Perry’s crisis, she clings to her faith, renewing the interest in prayer and worship she has let slip in the years since she and Russ met in a Catholic church. While many people question or give up on faith in the midst of hard times, seeing hardship as evidence that God is indifferent or nonexistent, Marion clings to her faith with renewed vigor. She takes comfort in the idea that God punishes people for bad actions and rewards them for good actions, even when, by her calculation, she is on the receiving end of punishment. Only within this system can she hope for redemption.