Crooked Cross by Sally Carson

Is it too early to claim I have just read a book that will be among my top ten of the year? Don’t bother answering that. It has already been decided. The newest book to be republished by Persephone Books is Sally Carson’s 1934 novel Crooked Cross. It is a powerful account of the rise of Nazism in Germany and how it affects one family in Kranach, a small Bavarian market town in the mountains south of Munich. As of right now, it is my pick for favourite book of the year.

 Christmas 1932. The Klugers are happy and looking forward to the future with optimism for the first time in years. The younger son has joined the Nazi Party and the elder son who has been unable to find work soon joins up too. The daughter Lexa, is engaged to Moritz Weissmann, a surgeon with a bright future. Recently, Lexa has quit her job at the library in preparation for their upcoming wedding and the couple’s excitement is evident during the holidays. Moritz and his father, Professor Weissmann, celebrate Christmas with the Klugers and the two families already feel joined.

But all of that is about to change. In the new year, Hitler is elected Chancellor, and changes quickly occur that on the surface may seem small. Moritz loses his job at the hospital because he is Jewish, and he is unable to find another. Professor Weissmann, who has all but lost his eyesight, had to give up his work at the university some time ago. With no money coming in, Moritz and his father are forced to move to a one-room flat. Soon Lexa’s brothers, Erich and Helmy, are telling Lexa that surely she must see that she has to give Moritz up because he is a Jew. As the Klugers effectively cut ties with the Weissmanns it becomes increasingly difficult for Lexa and Moritz to see each other. 

‘Is it worth it, Lexa?’ he asked. ‘Do you realise all it means?’

She was looking at him directly.

‘To me — everything,’ she answered.

[…]

Moritz said, ‘But it seems hard — too hard on you. I didn’t know you felt like that about it too.’

Nor had Lexa known until that moment. All her muddled ideas and thoughts, her worries and anxieties for Moritz had a reason, a point, an ending now. This was her loyalty; this was where she had to act. This was her moment, the moment for which she must have been waiting. (109)

At the risk of sounding trite, this is a beautiful love story set from Christmas 1932 to the summer of 1933. This book is poignant, moving, and powerful. And oh, so devastating. All while I was reading I kept marvelling at the fact that Crooked Cross was published so close to the time it is set, just a year later. Without the benefit of hindsight this book is a warning to the world of what was happening in Germany at the time, and written by an English woman who spent holidays in Munich in the early 1930s.

The whole way through I felt like I was waiting for something to happen. Of course, we know the history, we know what is about to happen, but it is nonetheless shocking. I have never read a book that was set in Germany at this time, and from a German perspective. One of the things I have never been able to wrap my head around was how someone like Hitler came into power. I did not understand the effect that losing World War I had on the German economy and how that must have in turn affected the citizens. The desperation of people who are hungry, out of work, and feeling a loss of identity is fully captured in this book. 

Allow me to quote from Laura Freeman’s preface, as she sums up this book so much better than I can.

The ‘crooked cross’ of the title refers to a swastika. Hitler called it a ‘hooked cross.’ The Nazi party may pretend that they offer stability and peace, but, as one character observes, ‘the price these people paid for their songs, their uniforms and their promises was a strange feeling of unrest and uncertainty.’ This is a book in which everything is crooked and in which people are hooked. If you have ever wondered how a nation was mesmerised by the lies of an authoritarian regime, Crooked Cross explains it with chilling force. (viii)

I hesitate to call this an important book, because if you are anything like me you read that and think, ‘ugh, sounds a lot like work’. But I assure you this book is the easiest time you will have broadening your mind and exposing yourself to a unique perspective.

As far as I am concerned this is a must read. If you are not ‘into’ politics, that’s fine. You don’t need to be. The love between Lexa and Moritz is like a bright light that gives these characters hope—that gives them something to fight for even when the chips are down and all is against them. So enjoy the rare treat of reading about a young couple whose feelings for each other go far beyond that of infatuation under the guise of love. 

The one thing about this book that I was not sure worked for me is so small a thing that I’m not even sure I need mention it. But, of course, I am going to because for better or worse, I do like to have a bit of a complain. For the most part, this book is written in third person past tense. However, scattered throughout the book the narration slips into second person. Sometimes it is just a sentence or two. Other times it is a few paragraphs. Second person narration is so uncommon in novels that I found it jarring each time I came across it. As I was reading I thought that the point might be to get the reader to better imagine themselves in a character’s shoes in moments of high emotion. But now that I’m not sure that its intended purpose was not to be jarring. It grabbed my attention every single time, causing me to pay special attention to those moments. Perhaps, that was Sally Carson’s intention. After he loses his job, Moritz asks of Lexa, “I wonder how much courage you’ve got, Lexa” (54), because he anticipates that things are going to get much harder for them. As Laura Freeman points out in the preface, the reader keeps asking themselves the same thing throughout the book. I think using the second person forces the reader to do this in specific places in the narrative, but without it, we would still be asking ourselves how much courage we have.

Sally Carson wrote two sequels to this book, The Prisoner (1936) and A Traveller Came By (1938). While Crooked Cross does have a definitive conclusion, it does end in the summer of 1933 when something momentous happens to the Klugers, and the second book is said to pick up in August of the same year. I am very much hoping Persephone will republish the other two books in this trilogy. 

I had a hard time figuring out how to approach reviewing this book. I can’t tell you this book is cosy, or lovely, or will make you feel good. But if you want to read an important book that will make you think, that presents a perspective to which you might not otherwise be exposed, that is terrifically well-written, then you should read this one. Book of the year material, this is.

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