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Crossroads of a Painful Past
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2016-06-21 22:04:28
THE DOOR AT
THE CROSSROADS
Living in New York City, I've become familiar with some of the out-of-the-way museums.
Among them is the Weeksville Heritage Center in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. There, wood frame houses of
one and two stories, preserved from the mid-nineteenth century, sit across busy streets from high-rise housing build in the
middle of the twentieth century. When Brooklyn was a separate town, Weeksville was a thriving all-black village where
people grew crops and raised livestock. Today, a community garden grows heritage fruits and vegetables and visitors young
and old learn about the original community and the changes in the neighborhood over the years. Zetta Elliott is a writer and
historian who two years ago served as the Weeksville Heritage Center's resident author. There, she wrote Dayshaun's Gift,
the story of a nine-year-old boy who, while working in the community garden, is transported to the Civil War era, when the
people of Weeksville aided black refugees from Manhattan fleeing the 1863 Draft Riots. Weeksville also plays a major role
in Elliott's new time travel novel for teen readers. [caption id="attachment_8572" align="alignright" width="208"]
Zetta Elliott reads from The Door to the Crossroads at the Weeksville Heritage Center.
[/caption] Fans of Elliott’s 2008 YA time travel, A Wish After Midnight (originally self-published, then republished by
Amazon Encore in 2010) have waited a long time for this sequel. Patience, however, has been rewarded by a second volume
as gripping and memorable as the first. The Door at the Crossroads, billed as the story of Genna's Jamican-born boyfriend
Judah, is that and so much more — a tale of sacrifice for love, and a love that turns out to be more complex and problematic
than the characters first believed. (Just like real life!) The novel from Elliott’s own imprint, Rosetta Press, begins on
September 11, 2001, when 16-year-old Genna Colon witnesses the destruction of the Twin Towers from across the river in
Brooklyn while her boyfriend, Judah, remains in Brooklyn in 1863. Except that Judah is in even worse trouble. He has been
kidnapped and sold into slavery down South, in a part of Georgia far from Union forces. Genna is torn between her life in
the twenty-first century, where she is reconciling with her mother and looking forward to her older sister Toshi’s new baby,
and her friends and Judah in Weeksville, a thriving nineteenth century African-American village within Brooklyn. While
Genna battles with a white teacher who doesn’t appreciate her passionate insights on history, Judah endures harsh labor and
beatings, and during an escape attempt he kills a white slave hunter. Eventually, he finds a Union encampment and makes
his way to Weeksville, but he isn’t the same person who was separated from Genna at the portal months earlier. When
Genna, with the help of Judah’s friend Peter, reopens the portal and returns to Brooklyn in 1863, all kinds of problems
ensue, not the least of which is the fact that Peter, who is gay (and hasn’t told Judah) accidentally ends up going into the past
with Genna. [caption id="attachment_8573" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Some of the buildings at the Weeksville Heritage Center.[/caption] Elliott tells Genna and Judah’s story in alternating
chapters. While Genna is in Brooklyn in 2001 and Judah is in the South, Judah has two chapters for every one of Genna’s.
When Genna arrives in Brooklyn in 1863, she takes over most of the narrative. Ultimately, The Door at the Crossroads, like
A Wish After Midnight, is Genna’s story, as it should be. Genna is a complex, multifaceted, and real character, one who can
carry a multivolume series. Her romantic struggles are also complex and illuminating, as she comes to realize that the boy
for whom she has sacrificed so much may not be worth the effort. Judah is both heroic and so deeply flawed as a person that
she may not want to have anything to do with him again. The Door at the Crossroads stands on its own — one doesn’t need
to have read A Wish After Midnight to appreciate it. Both new characters such as Peter and ones that appeared in the earlier
volume are fully developed, and the conflicts are fresh, with high and compelling stakes. I don’t know if there’s a third
volume in the works, but I hope there is and I won’t have to wait another six years to read it. In the meantime, The Door at
the Crossroads is a novel to read, savor, and reread.
