Crooked Cross

Crooked Crossby Sally Carson This is a book to keep. Written in the early 1930s it opens with the Kluger family, mother, father and their three adult children, coming home from church on Christmas Eve. It's an idyllic scene as they chat to friends and catch up with neighbours. Daughter, Lexa, is engaged to be married to Moritz, who is treated as one of the family. But, beneath the happiness is a frustration at the economic situation and the lack of employment.

by Sally Carson

This is a book to keep. 

Written in the early 1930s it opens with the Kluger family, mother, father and their three adult children, coming home from church on Christmas Eve. It's an idyllic scene as they chat to friends and catch up with neighbours.  Daughter, Lexa, is engaged to be married to Moritz, who is treated as one of the family. But, beneath the happiness is a frustration at the economic situation and the lack of employment. Adult sons Helmy and Erich struggle to find permanent work until they are employed with the 'party' and meanwhile Lexa realises that her fiance is no longer so popular with the family because of the changing attitudes to Jewish people. Stormtroopers start to march the streets, Jewish people are dragged from their homes and people just get on with their lives as awful things unfold around them. 

Considering this novel was written before WWII, it's incredibly prescient, and for us as readers, knowing how events played out - it's a tense read. But Carson was a superb writer, although little has been heard about her and she shows perfectly how politics is personal and the personal is political. 

Originally published in 1934, this is a beautiful soft cover version republished in 2025.