injections, and curbside pickup to our vernacular. We were still learning the meaning of the pandemic, and few of us knew what lay ahead.

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The Crossing is set in those early days but does not dwell on some disease of unknown origin. Instead, it centers on the more pervasive maladies that continue to beset us this century.

 

Bigotry. Ignorance. Cruelty.

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The novel revisits the PI, Francis McNally (Dark Time, Northward), and follows him again to Canada, where the usually quiet hamlet of Baker Lake is in turmoil: a murder remains unsolved, a popular schoolteacher has disappeared, and an aggressive and bigoted nationalism has sprung up in the predominantly Inuit community. 

 

McNally realizes early on that, although he's in civilized democratic Canada, he's experiencing exactly what is happening in the U.S., Europe, Asia—on any continent or in any country espousing the delusion that rekindling the past will ensure a brighter future.

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McNally has seen the past. He'd prefer not to go back.