When Bradley dumped her, her mental health worsened. She developed an unhealthy obsession with Bradley and also had periods of total dissociation from which she would awake with bruises and scars. Subsequently, Marion moved to Los Angeles where she began an affair with a car salesman, Bradley Grant, and quickly started showing signs of a mental health experience. She begins seeing a therapist, unbeknownst to anyone in the family, and at one of her appointments she reveals the full story of her past that no one in her family knows.

Her whole family sees her just as a caretaker, and she has no real friends. Marion, Russ’s wife, feels invisible in her daily life in New Prospect.

The two used to lead the church’s youth group Crossroads together, but they had a falling out when several of the teens tried to kick Russ out of the group and Rick did nothing to prevent it. The reader also learns through flashbacks that Russ hates his fellow associate pastor, Rick Ambrose.

Throughout Part 1, Russ increases the frequency of his interactions with Frances, trying to inch ever closer to a romantic and sexual relationship. In the opening of Part 1, “Advent,” Russ, an associate pastor at a Presbyterian church in the Hildebrandts’ Chicago suburb, contemplates an affair with his one of his parishioners, Frances Cottrell. Only the youngest sibling, Judson, is not represented as a point-of-view character. This study guide addresses topics that include drug use, sexual assault, and suicide.Ĭrossroads is structured in two parts: “Advent” and “Easter.” Each part contains sections that shift between the points of view of five of the six members of the Hildebrandt family: father Russ, mother Marion, and siblings Clem, Becky, and Perry.

Crossroads franzen