Have You Read This? Crossroads by Laurel Hightower

Many are familiar with the expression “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” This idea has been promoted in fantastical story after fantastical story about wishes. Sometimes, like in Aladdin, the protagonist realizes that what they wished for wasn’t really what they wanted or needed. However, in stories like “The Monkey’s Paw,” making a wish means inviting misfortune because wishes aren’t necessarily free, and sometimes the cost is quite steep. And we can’t forget the ubiquitous Faustian Deal where a wish or desire is granted but the wisher has to give up something at great personal cost, most often one’s soul. This process can seem literal as well as metaphorical, as in Laurel Hightower’s novel Crossroads.

Chris still mourns the loss of her adult son Trey, who died in an automobile accident. She visits the scene of the accident, hoping to be close to him, even hearing his voice while she’s there. But a drop of her blood touches the ground around where her son died, and she soon starts to see Trey outside her window. Chris thinks that her prayers have somehow been answered, that her son has returned to him, but she must still sacrifice. She must literally give more and more of herself in order for Chris to remain among the living, but soon the question becomes how much can Chris give before she completely loses herself.

Hightower digs deeply into Chris’s grief as it has Chris committing acts that might make a more sensitive stomach turn, but this is no novel that’s just shock and gore. Hightower showcases Chris’s emotional pain, the pain of a mother who, in Chris’s mind, could not be there for her son when she really needed him. The novel discusses how Chris is so desperate to get her son back that she is willing to literally give her own flesh and blood to rescue him, playing a sort of guessing game because, unlike most stories of Faustian deals and wishes, whatever is bringing Trey back does not make what it wants from Chris clear, leaving her to guess how much blood and flesh is required. The supernatural, in that sense, takes a back seat to the emotional trauma of the characters, from Chris to potential boyfriend and savior Dan to ex-husband Beau, who has seemingly moved on with a new family.  Fans of Stephen King’s

Pet Sematary will find similar ground dug up in Hightower’s tale, but rather than filled full or reanimated pets and Wendigos, Hightower focuses on the pain of parental grief, the hell a parent endures when he or she has outlived their child, and the emotional and physical bargaining a parent will do to bring that child back.