Crooked Cross

A thrilling, long-lost British novel—never before published in the U.S.—that warned of Hitler’s rise through the story of an ordinary German family during six fateful months in 1933; it has been hailed as “a surprise breakout success” and “a word-of-mouth jaw-dropper” in the UK.

The Klugers are a tight-knit family living in a picturesque mountain village in Bavaria. As 1932 draws to a close, Herr Kluger is dismayed by the growing popularity of the Nazi Party but aware of its leader’s charisma: he warns his two sons, “Don’t you know that to hear that chap speak is to believe everything he says for twenty-four hours?” To his sons, however, the Party offers not only employment prospects but also meaning and purpose—a powerful draw for a generation whose life chances had been decimated by Germany’s defeat in the Great War. Helmy, the sensitive elder brother, joins the Party with some reluctance, while Erich becomes a true believer.

Their beloved sister, Lexa, meanwhile, finds her engagement to her sweetheart under threat. Moritz Weissman, though a Catholic, is half-Jewish, and when it becomes clear he is at risk, Lexa’s family urges her to break things off. She continues to see Moritz secretly, but as Hitler becomes chancellor, laws restricting Jews are passed, Dachau is opened, and armed thugs roam the streets rounding up “enemies of the state,” history closes in on the young lovers.

Crooked Cross, written while Sally Carson was visiting Germany in the early 1930s and witnessing the historic events it depicts, is insightful, moving, and shockingly prescient.