Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

I have been impulse checking out at my local library, which means that I have been checking on the 14-Day loan shelf for something that I am well down the list to get with a traditional hold. I started with the Hilary Clinton/Louise Penny thriller, and went on at my peak to take out The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and Cloud Cuckoo Land together one week, which landed me reading in excess of a 100 pages a day to get them back on time. This book is a different story, one that I did not intend to read necessarily, but happened upon and I am glad that I did. At it's most basic, this is a book about a family. The husband is a pastor, and he comes form a long line of pastors, so it is a habit in his family of origin. his wife is a pastor's wife, but she has her own dark past, with a father who suicided and a few unwise choices that predated her marriage, and then there are their four children, three boys and a girl. The thing that elevates this story beyond what you might expect is the meticulous attention to detail for all but the youngest child. The adults are in the midst of a midlife malaise that they do no better a job of navigating than most, and the teens are all sorts of impulsive and that lands them all in a certain amount of trouble. This is a well written wild ride that should not be missed.