Maybe Crossings

Maybe Crossings is a historical novel about three black and white families whose lives were shaped by the civil rights movement of the 1960s. When the Korean War kills his best friend, Arthur, a young white boy from Buffalo, fulfills a pledge to help his war buddy and best friend’s widow Cora in Nashville, TN. That begins a lifelong relationship of mutual support between Cora, who is Black, and Arthur, who is white. Their friendship deepens when Arthur decides to stop lying about his miserable marriage to a racist alcoholic. But his honesty costs him total separation him from his only child, Don. Cora and her son Edward are involved in the civil rights protests in their city, Nashville, Tennessee. Edward, determined to get more involved, joins the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign that attracted 1,000 student volunteers to the Deep South to teach literacy and register voters. It is dangerous work on the frontlines of the Movement. There in Maybe Crossings, Mississippi, Edward meets Ann, a privileged white girl from New York, and Reggie, a brilliant and charismatic Jamaican-born activist. But at summer’s end, after failing to persuade the Democratic Party to give them a seats at its convention, most of the young adults from Freedom Summer move on with their lives. Edward becomes a pastor. Ann finds herself pregnant but earns a PhD and becomes a professor. Don, Arthur’s estranged son, finds love with Ann and Keisha, Ann’s biracial daughter. But what happened to Reggie? In 2003, family secrets surface through a succession of coincidences and profoundly unsettle Don and daughter Keisha, forcing them to redefine their understandings of commitment, race, forgiveness, and family in the 21st Century.This is a story of relationships yearning for redemption. It is a story of activists and their children, the differences and similarities in their struggles. Readers will find the characters Cora, Arthur, Don, Ann, Edward, Keisha, and her man friend Richard memorable in their complexity and their courage. By popular request this new edition includes a discussion guide. The sequel, Dark Crossings (2022), follows the same characters in 2019.