Crooked Cross by Sally Carson

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.

Lexa has many admirers, but her heart belongs to Moritz, who is initially welcomed by her parents and two brothers, Helmy and Erich. As the year progresses, Lexa enjoys skiing, swimming and going to parties with Moritz and her friends. But little by little Moritz is excluded from the pool, the library, and eventually his own home.

As support for the Nazi Party grows rapidly across the country, Lexa’s own brothers, now fervent members of the Nazi Youth, turn against Moritz. Under immense pressure and desperate to be together, Lexa and Moritz have to meet in secret.

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.

REVIEWS

"Sally Carson’s prescient novel offers an unflinching look at the early days of Nazism, resonating with today’s fears of lost boys, strong men and old hatreds... A remarkable novel: chilling, compelling, contained..." The Times

"...warrants a permanent place in the growing canon of World War Two literature." Clare McHugh, BBC Culture

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback with French flaps
Publisher: Persephone Books
ISBN: 978-1910263426
Pages: 380
Endpapers: The endpapers for Crooked Cross are taken from a curtain material – machine cord embroidery on a linen background – that's just the sort of thing Frau Kluger might have had hanging in her kitchen. It was manufactured in Germany in 1930 and sold at the Hohenzollern-Kunstgewerbehaus Friedmann & Weber GmbH in Berlin (which was forced to close in 1936) © Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz/May Voigt.