Once, a woman told me the closest thing she had to a religion was speculative fiction. Just as spiritual practices do for many believers, reading Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler helped her face the haunting edge of humanity’s knowledge, those parts of being alive that refuse explanation.
It’s this confrontation with mystery that Megan Giddings places at the center of her captivating novel Meet Me at the Crossroads. Seven doors appear around the world, each opening to a beautifully warped alternative dimension. Those who walk through these doors see meadows peppered with gold stones and orange deserts under purple skies — but they don’t always come back. Once people realize that the doors are “uncontrollable, unkillable and unknowable,” most ignore them or call them a hoax, aside from a few fringe religious groups. Woven with plenty of heart, this story is not so much about the nature of the unknown as the complicated ways people cope with it.
In Michigan, twins Ayanna and Olivia grow up near one of the doors, developing contrasting ideas of its meaning. Ayanna lives with their father, who raises her in a marginalized faith community that reveres the door as a divine invitation to embrace mystery. Olivia lives with their mother, a Catholic who rejects her ex-husband’s religion as heretical. Amid the tense family dynamics, the sisters remain close until, upon entering the door as teenagers, Olivia disappears.
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