Crossing Over
Publishing as an industry is obsessed with new – books yet to come out… but what about the brilliant books that have already been published? Each month we spotlight a different author whose book was published more than a year ago, which you might be yet to meet… This month we hear from Ann Morgan about the brilliant Crossing Over…
Shuffling the Shelves: Crossing Over by Ann Morgan
Writing about the near future is risky. It’s like trying to predict what’s around the next corner. You might get it right or you might be surprised. Either way, it won’t be long before everyone can see whether you were on the money or embarrassingly wide of the mark.
That was how I felt when I set out to write my second novel, Crossing Over. When I moved to the Kent coast in 2016, I was disturbed by the way politicians and the media were talking about the small boat crossings in the Mediterranean. It was a ‘swarm of people’, according to erstwhile prime minister David Cameron.
Back then, no one was trying to traverse the English Channel in small boats – the first such recorded crossing wasn’t until 2018. But it was clear that it was only a matter of time. How might it be when small boats were regularly trying to reach the UK’s shores? And how would a society that described those making such perilous journeys as a ‘swarm’ treat the human beings who eventually staggered onto the beaches a few hundred metres from my front door?
I decided to write Crossing Over to try to put the humanity back into the story of such journeys. The novel brings together two characters involved in very different crossings – eighty-seven-year-old Edie, who took part in the 1940 Dunkirk Little Ships rescue as a child, and Jonah, a Malawian migrant recently arrived across the Channel. They come from very different worlds and never fully understand each other, but through their interaction they make a kind of peace with themselves.
Oddly enough, Crossing Over wasn’t published in print until 2023. By that stage, the number of people annually attempting to cross the Channel in small boats was in the tens of thousands, and there had been scores of fatalities. The book came out into the future I had imagined.
Recently, at a literary festival, a coastguard who spends a lot of time tracking small boats came up to me clutching a copy of Crossing Over. ‘How did you know?’ he said, shaking his head in amazement.
The feeling was bitter-sweet. I was pleased and proud that he thought my depiction was accurate, but I was saddened that my fears had come true. Still, I hope that also means that the story is true in the fullest sense, and that it does contain the humanity I wanted to capture. And I hope it’s a good read too.
– Ann Morgan, February 2025
Crossing Over
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Edie finds the world around her increasingly difficult to comprehend. Words are no longer at her beck and call, old friends won’t mind their own business and workmen have appeared in the neighbouring fields, preparing to obliterate the landscape she has known all her life. Rattling around in an old farmhouse on the cliffs, she’s beginning to run out of excuses to stop do-gooders interfering when one day she finds an uninvited guest in the barn and is thrown back into the past.
Jonah has finally made it to England – where everything, he’s been told, will be better. But the journey was fraught with danger, and many of his fellow travellers didn’t make it. Sights firmly set on London, but unsure which way to turn, he is unprepared for what happens when he breaks into Edie’s barn.
Haunted by the prospect of being locked away and unable to trust anyone else, the elderly woman stubbornly battling dementia and the traumatised illegal immigrant find solace in an unlikely companionship that helps them make sense of their worlds even as they struggle to understand each other. Crossing Over is a delicately spun tale that celebrates compassion and considers the transcendent language of humanity.
Up next…
We asked Ann to choose the next book to join the shuffled shelves, so join us here to find out more about Godot Is a Woman.
Ann said:
Hearing Jack Wakely talk about their discovery that Waiting for Godot can only be performed by men by law instantly piqued my interest in Godot Is a Woman. So many people would walk away when a door is slammed in their face like that; instead, Silent Faces turned the doorstep into a stage. Such a playful, creative and bold response.