I spent a good portion of November reading Mark Z. Danielewski’s 2025 Western “Tom’s Crossing.”
The book, while fictional, is presented as a historical work, with its unnamed narrator reflecting on the events of the novel and the characters’ respective journeys.
The novel spans only five days in 1982 but is relentlessly slow and highly descriptive over the course of its 1,232 pages.
In an age of ever-shortening attention spans, I highly admired this book and the creative risk Danielewski took with it.
Danielewski is most well-known for his experimental horror-romance novel “House of Leaves,” which features upside-down pages that need to be seen in a mirror to be read.
“Tom’s Crossing” is a departure from Danielewski’s experimental style. In an ironic way, though, it’s his strangest book because of how utterly normal it is.
Danielewski does still play with language in the novel, with the narrator speaking in a unique dialect. For example, ‘enough’ is written as ‘enuf.’
“Sure, maybe the colors had dimmed some and some of the artists’ names had fled from recollection, but there’d still been some dang fine pieces, fine enuf to remain dangerously volatile in his memory and imagination.”
The writing style of this book reminds me of a mix of William Faulkner and Stephen King: oddball horror with a bit of social commentary. This is a strange combo that only a writer like Danielewski could conjure.
The book also departs from Danielewski’s other works in terms of genre.
Many of his books have a special emphasis on the strange and paranormal. However, in “Tom’s Crossing,” supernatural elements take a back seat to the character drama and themes of Western moralism that make up a majority of the plot.
The events of the book take place in Orvop, Utah, a play on Provo, a city on a mountain plain that is heavily influenced by the Mormon Church, where Danielewski spent his teenage years.
The unnamed narrator, who is revealed later in the book, begins the story with the new kid Kalin arriving in Orvop. Kalin immediately takes a liking to Tom Gatestone, a member of one of the influential families in Orvop.
However, Tom soon falls ill with cancer. Before his death, he tasks Kalin with saving two beloved horses, Navidad and Mouse, from being rendered at a meat plant by taking them to Tom’s Crossing, a mysterious location somewhere in the mountains of Orvop.
Kalin begins the long journey to the fabled Tom’s Crossing, joined by Tom’s adopted sister, Landry, as well as the ghost of Tom himself.
The plot really kicks off when the villains are introduced: the Porch clan, who own Navidad and Mouse.
The family is headed by Orwin “Old” Porch, owner of Porch Meats and an angry, violent man who rules over his many sons with an iron fist.
Old Porch accidentally kills one of his sons in a drunken rage and blames the murder on Kalin and Landry, setting off a chain of events that nearly tears Orvop apart.
With many references to the Greek classics, “Tom’s Crossing” is intended to portray a journey on the scale of the “Odyssey,” something it definitely lives up to.
This book is filled with beauty, tragedy, social commentary, sublime nature and more. Every page is packed to the brim with minute, detailed descriptions.
If you enjoy slow and ponderous works, you will love this book.
The many themes present in Danielewski’s writing make for meaningful reading; in fact, this book could be seen as an allegory for our modern times.
There are references to hypocrisy in the church, political corruption, toxic masculinity and the destruction of nature among other subjects.
Danielewski also describes the conflicts between the Mormon Church, politics and life.
“The laws of the State, the laws of the Church, and the laws of the Land don’t necessarily align, but it’s in the variance of the in-betweens where most folks live.”
Overall, “Tom’s Crossing” is a battle between the forces of good and evil, a plot well within the tradition of Western novels.
This whole book will never leave my memory; it is beautifully written and had me quite emotional throughout.
Danielewski is a fabulous writer; this book is a modern masterpiece and a new entry into the “big ol’ books” category of literature.
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