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Tom's Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski (Pantheon Books, 2025)

Reviewed by Brody Eldridge

In Mark Z. Danielewski's 2000 debut novel, now cult classic, House of Leaves, there is an entry in Appendix B, stating:

"Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. 

Of course those who write short books have even less to say." (245)

Now, twenty-five years (and a few more books) later, Danielewski returns with a "long book." Tom's Crossing, this newest work, is a 1,228-page long door stopper of a tome.

Anyone familiar with Danielewski knows that he loves to play with form and narrative. (Reading House of Leaves as an impressionable undergraduate fundamentally altered my understanding of what a book could, not just do, but be.) Danielewski naturally has his critics, such as Redditers who describe House of Leaves as "gimmicky and derivative." And considering that most of Danielewski's oeuvre does utilize textual form in a highly experimental way (as House of Leaves does), this is a criticism you could apply to most of his work. Yet there are also many who proclaim the gospel of his work as found in House of Leaves. Bob Dylan might have been talking about Jack Kerouac's On the Road when he said, "It changed my life like it changed everyone else's," but how else can we understand the cult following around Danielewski and House of Leaves?

An experimental approach to form and narrative is exactly what one might expect in Tom's Crossing. However, if you are expecting lots and lots of blank pages, mirrored pages which require literal mirrors to read, full pages dedicated exclusively to footnotes, or any sort of page that would require you to turn the physical book upside down to read, then you might be disappointed. In a surprising turn, Tom's Crossing is 1,228 pages of pure narration. Considering Danielewski's typical form, the question arises: can Danielewski sustain a narrative so long without his usual "pageantry?" Perhaps a more significant question is, with such a long book, does Danielewski have anything to say?

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Tom's Crossing is a neo-Western set in the early 1980s in the fictional Orvop, Utah, which is "just a jiggle of letters" from the very real Provo, Utah (1,231). Tom Gatestone is an infamous teenager in Orvop, known for his bull riding. Tom befriends a newcomer in the small town, Kalin March, an outcast sophomore. The two develop a strong friendship by sneaking off with two of Orwin Porch's horses and riding them in the surrounding Utah wilderness. Tom passes away from cancer soon after, but not before bidding Kalin to undertake a quest.

The Gatestones and Porches are both well-established in Orvop, through a long history of settlement. And they have a long history of conflict, disagreements over matters like who owns what land. Tom's older brother and father are dead, but are referenced throughout, their ghosts present mostly in memory (although they do briefly appear as literal specters). It is implied that both were killed by the Porch family. The disdain each family holds for the other is strong.

When Kalin steals off with two of the Porches' horses, it sets off a chain reaction of events that results in "so much awful horror" (13). Kalin steals these two horses, which he and Tom call Navidad and Mouse, out of love. Orwin Porch (known as Old Porch, the family's patriarch) keeps the horses in Paddock A, but he moves the horses he will "render" to Paddock B (303). On his death bed, Tom tells Kalin that he must free the horses when they go to Paddock B, and they must be freed at "Tom's Crossing," two fence posts out in Pillars Meadows.

Landry, Tom's adopted younger sister and remaining heir to the Gatestone name, knows about this deathbed promise, and follows after Kalin when he steals off with Navidad and Mouse. Russel Porch, Orwin's son, witnesses Kalin stealing the horses and reports back to his father, who then sends Russel out to recover them. Russel takes the family's heirloom, a Colt pistol, without permission. He points it at Kalin, but is surprised by a spying Landry, who disarms him. In this moment, what should turn into a further divide between the Gatestones and the Porches, becomes a chance for unity. Russel, Landry, and Kalin make up, and they all agree to a business transaction: the two horses for $20. Landry keeps hold of the Colt, planning to return it to Russel the next day, while Russel rides home pleased with himself. He has made friends and has also been saved from abuse that failure in his mission would have brought upon him.

Russel's fate is sealed, unfortunately. In a drunken haze, Old Porch beats Russel for losing the Colt, and Russel falls on a broken drinking glass. The resulting cut proves fatal. Old Porch, scheming and with too much to lose, cleans up the scene and then recreates it so he can blame Kalin for the murder.

If you think this spoils the novel, you may be surprised to hear this is only the first 130 pages, a meagre 10%. The next 90% is a long plod. Around page 900, Danielewski even shifts the narrative away from Kalin, Landry, the horses, the Porches, and the Gatestone and March matriarchs (Sondra and Allison respectively) to sit with a Cal Carneros who has nothing to do with the main events of the novel. It is a roughly 60-page detour that some would deem unnecessary, but it allows Danielewski a chance to digest the story he is telling, including contemplating how art that represents a history distants itself and the viewer from that very same history.

This theme runs throughout the novel: history or stories or people as a sort of haunting. Kalin is literally haunted by Tom's ghost who tags along. Landry cannot see her brother, and neither can anyone else other than Kalin, but in a turn of magical realism, Kalin can ride along with his friend one more time.

The land is haunted. There are references to the 1849 "Battle Crick Massacre." Sondra (Landry's mother) explains to Allison (Kalin's mother) that "Over a hundred Timpanogos Indians were killt by the Church militia": "It's not the prettiest picture of Church Settlers" (509). The Church here being a stand in for the Mormon Church. This haunting of the land affects Tom, Kalin, and Landry, and it operates as a chain between individuals. Kalin is haunted by Tom's ghost, and Tom can only be set free into the beyond of death, whatever that might be, after the horses go through the crossing. In a cave, Tom meets Pia Isan, a victim of the church settlers’ violence. The myth surrounding her is that she haunts the canyon looking for vengeance. Pia Isan and Tom make a deal that will help them both move on. Tom explains to Kalin, "Like Pia Isan haunts me, she too is haunted, and the one hauntin her is haunted, and so on" (835). Freeing the horses would free Tom, which would free Pia Isan, which would free the long, long chain of ghosts that goes on and on. The history of atrocity haunts the land, but it also haunts the individuals who reckon with this history. It is a form of penance.

The families are haunted by their past disagreements. Tom, Landry, and Kalin take refuge inside a mountain cave one night, while it snows furiously outside. Landry goes to bed but Tom and Kalin reckon with the ghosts within the cave. In a moment of katabasis, Tom interacts with a whole slew of bygone generations, including his own ancestors and the Porches' ancestors. Both sets start bickering with each other:

Not even the dead could get their stories straight or release themselves from the foul bonds of disagreements as recent as the Gatliner Realty Dispute, the Harvest-Meadow Development, and the Ridgeline Meadow Estates Claim and so on and so on. (338)

And all of this, the hauntings, are history. History is a haunting. A Greek chorus also runs through the novel. The novel's narrator will reference many people (mostly citizens of Orvop who moved away) and those people's thoughts on the novel's events taking place as they happen in the real time of the novel's plot. One of these choristers, Abigail Fathwell says, "The ghost isn't in the machine. The ghost is the machine!" (1210). The narrator draws out the idea:

Which really ain't so gross a mistellin, if the machine in mind is how a story is told, because stories too are ghosts, shamblin beside us with their take on things, their tales, over and over, until we can eventually shake free of their influence, another retellin, their memory. (1210-11)

Every story is a ghost story, bringing the past up to the forefront and into the present where we must confront the ghost itself, for better or for worse.

And yet with enough time, the past becomes hazy, a faint memory. The ghost can disappear. Kalin talks about this later on in his life: "That's what haunts me the most now […] that the world is ghostless. How awful is that? Or am I just gettin old?" (1213). It is only a story if you tell it, and you are only as haunted as you remember the ghosts of the past.

But does this haunting have to be awful? As Kalin says, speculating upon Tom¾his presence was the necessary force to get him and Landry through their awful, epic, beautiful adventure¾"Sometimes only a ghost will do" (1210). Sometimes being haunted is not a bad thing after all. In fact, that is what is so scary about the world being "ghostless," about getting old: you're distanced from and/or you forget the good you once had.

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Does Danielewski have something to say? Strip him of his bells and whistles: is he substantive in theme, character, plot, or even pathos? There is much to unpack in a novel of this size. And for some readers, that might be the problem.

Tom LeClair, author of The Art of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction, wrote in his review for Los Angeles Review of Books, "I won’t call Tom’s Crossing a failure, just not a major work of maximalist fiction. The novel seems to me a stupendous waste of effort." To some, Tom's Crossing might not seem like a plod, but a slog. In a Parade interview, Danielewski confronts the novel's length:

I think one of the biggest notes of counsel that I would offer readers is to read it slowly. You know, I think you will be frustrated if you try to read it quickly. It is not that kind of journey. It would be as if you and I were about to head out, you know, on a huge climb that was going to take us days and days. And we looked around and we saw some people just suddenly sprinting towards the mountain and we’re like, “Yeah, that’s not going to happen."

Perhaps in this regard, Tom's Crossing is like an old Victorian novel, a connection LeClair makes, calling it "an original simulacrum of a 19th-century novel." Victorian novels were often read in serial form, with new chapter(s) being published every month. Victorian readers had to wait; they could not just "sprint up the mountain." Some Victorian authors were also paid by the word. Marcel Theroux writing for The Guardian calls the novel "prolix" and suggests it could be much shorter. To our tastes, Dickens' style (and many Victorians' style) is "prolix." That is not necessarily a bad thing, but not all readers will want to climb the mountain.

It is worth mentioning that Tom's Crossing shares some interesting parallels to Ari Aster's newest film, Eddington (also released in 2025). Without spoilers, planting evidence on blameless victims plays a big role in both plots. In a weird moment of, perhaps, cultural osmosis, both Tom's Crossing and Eddington have a scene where one character shoots and kills another, and the shooter utilizes three bullets and, for reasons of incompetency or bad luck, can only find two of the casings. The third casing lies in the sand as evidence of their crimes. Even more interesting is that Eddington is set in New Mexico, during the 2020 COVID pandemic. Danielewski wrote quite a lot of Tom's Crossing during the pandemic. Finger on the pulse. Something in the 2020 air. Clearly, Aster and Danielewski were harmonizing together over something that was going around, whether that be socially, politically, or historically.

For those who do climb the mountain and hopefully also enjoy the hike, you will find plenty of treasures along the way. I read the bulk of the novel in about a week, and somehow, I never felt winded sprinting up the mountain. Danielewski has much to say, and what he does say, I think is very insightful. Sometimes only a ghost will do, and I am haunted.

Brody C. J. Eldridge graduated in 2024 from Palm Beach Atlantic University with a BA in English. He was a 2024-2025 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant award winner for the Republic of Georgia. He is now pursuing a Master of Philosophy in English Studies at the University of Cambridge, where his research focuses on AI-generated art and its relationship to contemporary and conventional literature.