Crooked Cross

An extraordinarily prescient 1934 novel tracing the rise of Nazism in Germany through the eyes of an ordinary family.

"Remarkable... The resonances with today are impossible to overlook." --Guardian

Gripping in its immediacy and poignant in its humanity, Sally Carson's celebrated historical fiction novel follows one family's deterioration through the rise of totalitarianism.

It is Christmas Eve 1932, and the Kluger family are celebrating at home. Their only daughter Lexa is excited about her upcoming summer wedding to Moritz Weissmann, a promising young doctor. Moritz is initially welcomed by her parents and two brothers, Helmy and Erich. But as the year progresses, and Lexa's brothers become fervent members of the Nazi Youth, they turn against Moritz.

By midsummer, the once close-knit Kluger family are now fractured by irreconcilable beliefs and differing loyalties. When legislation strips the town's Jewish citizens of their rights and their livelihoods, Lexa remains steadfast in her determination to stay true to Moritz, the couple forced to meet in secret.

A captivating portrayal of the Nazis' growth in power between December 1932 and June 1933, Crooked Cross grounds history in the lives of ordinary people to intimately detail a country's grim descent into authoritarianism. With the outbreak of war and Carson's death in 1941 leaving her work largely forgotten until now, this newly rediscovered classic remains as resonant now as when it was first published.