The doors appear and disappear without warning or explanation. When they open, they show beautiful vistas and strange new worlds, and some people could swear they hear voices calling to them from the other side. But open or closed, the doors refuse to give up their secrets. And like so many mysteries, they are divisive, even among families. Ayanna was raised by her father in a religion that worshiped the doors, while her twin sister, Olivia, was raised by their mother as a Catholic. Their lives are separate but connected all the same. Until the day that Olivia was lost in the world beyond the doors and their connection was severed forever. Adrift in the aftermath of her sister’s disappearance, Ayanna is haunted not only by her sister’s absence, but also by the spirits who inhabit both her world and the world beyond the doors.
Meet Me at the Crossroads is the latest literary science fiction crossover from acclaimed novelist Megan Giddings (Lakewood, The Women Could Fly). The novel is difficult to label: While it is conceptually a portal fantasy of sorts, Meet Me at the Crossroads deals just as much with the spiritual world as what’s on the other side of the doors. More central than either of those ideas, however, is its preoccupation with the visceral sensations of grief. Indeed, it is in the experience of mourning and the marks it leaves on the soul that Giddings’ luxuriously dreamy prose really shines, drawing our attention to the small things we fixate on in grief and eliding the unimportant things (like the passage of time) that loss-addled brains sometimes skip over. Meet Me at the Crossroads is a book not of tortuous plots, but of experience. Slow and poetic, its almost hypnotic style eschews sentimentality for experience and wonder, reminding us that while the truth might be out there, it rarely takes the form that we expect.