Crosses Summary
Shelley Stoehr

Crosses Summary

"We cut ourselves." Like the first line of Robert Cormier's groundbreaking novel The Chocolate War ("They murdered him"), Crosses starts with a bang and never lets up.

Crosses tells the story of two young women who are cutters. Katie and Nancy cut their own skin with sharp objects; Nancy even keeps a supply of jagged glass in her purse or hidden in her room so she has quick and easy access when the compulsion to cut strikes her. But cutting is only one of the self-injurious behaviors in Nancy's life. She also abuses drugs and alcohol (the abuse her parents share with her); she is abused verbally by her parents, socially by her classmates, physically by her boyfriend, and raped by an acquaintance. Katie shares a similar catalog of pain and compulsions, although it is Nancy who narrates the story and that readers learn and care most about...

(read more from the Short Guide)