Good historical fiction has a way of suspending certainty. It can make known outcomes feel like chancy propositions. Crossing Point, a meaty and satisfying novel by James Glickman, works this magic with the Revolutionary War, unspooling a story with more setbacks than triumphs and thrillingly conveying what a doubtful thing—both militarily and morally—American independence really was.
— Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal: Best New Fiction, Nov. 11, 2017.
With the sure hand of an accomplished author, James Glickman gives us a profoundly moving tale of the American Revolution populated by leading luminaries as well as the enslaved. This is historical fiction at its best, an edifying and enjoyable read for the lay reader and the specialist. The history is impeccable and the story truly riveting.
— Manisha Sinha, National Book Award nominee and winner of the 2017
Frederick Douglass Book Prize for The Slave’s Cause
Glickman does a terrific job of fleshing out historical events with thoroughly believable characters from all strata of society from slave to General Washington. He follows the historical record closely, and paints events in glowing detail that seizes the imagination of even the most jaded reader. I couldn’t recommend Crossing Point more highly.
— Jo Ann Butler, historicalnovelsociety.org: Editor’s Choice for November 2017
In his novel Crossing Point, James Glickman does two things that have long needed doing. With style and grace, he recovers in fiction the otherwise invisible role African Americans played during the American war for independence. And he allows us to visualize, more palpably and poignantly than the documentary record usually permits, the sustained suffering required to achieve a desperate and highly problematic victory.
— Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Founding Brothers and most recently The Quartet
When you hear “American Revolution,” do you think Rhode Island? You should, as James Glickman’s marvelous and surprising novel Crossing Point makes clear….He has produced a thoroughly enjoyable novel which enlightens us about the origins of our land.
— Robert H. Bradley, New Boston Post, March 7, 2017
Set in slave-holding Rhode Island with its African echoes, Crossing Point brilliantly recreates the lives of slave and master in the early years of the American Revolution. Glickman brings this period to life with all its suffering and sobering complexity.
— Eugenia W. Herbert, author of The Private Franklin and Twilight on the Zambezi
Crossing Point is engaging as a work of history, where realistic detail grounds and girds the story; but it’s a work of imaginative grace and vision as well. James Glickman is a gifted writer, and he makes the American war for independence credible — physically and emotionally real. I don’t think many of us know this war as well as we think, especially the story of black participation. Glickman has provided a genuine service here, imagining our history for us, summoning the warp and woof of daily life in a pressured time. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to come closer to the wellsprings of the American story, our conflicted and fiery origins.
— Jay Parini, poet, novelist, biographer and author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M
I have read your novel with much pleasure and fascinated interest. I was quite won over by the skill with which you humanize the abstractions of military history – the relations of officers and men, rebels and loyalists, blacks and whites, slaves and masters, and make the incredible horrors of war credible.
— C. Vann Woodward, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Strange Career of Jim Crow and editor of The Oxford History of the United States