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Crossing Over Paperback – December 28, 2018

by Paul Clayton (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 171 ratings
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READERS' FAVORITE REVIEW by Donna Gielow McFarland

CROSSING OVER by Paul Clayton tells the story of an American family trying to survive the beginnings of the second civil war. Set some time in the not-too-distant future, the existence of two simultaneous presidents has split the country along ideological lines. The protests are becoming violent, sections of the country have formed their own militias, along with the militias of the two warring parties. In the midst of shortages of food and other necessities, gangs and thugs are terrorizing formerly safe neighborhoods. Realizing that it is no longer safe to remain in their home, Mike McNerney decides to pack the camper and flee to Canada with his wife, Marie, and disabled teenage daughter, Elly. Unfortunately, everyone else has the same idea.

Once I started reading, I could not put down this well-written and compelling short novel. Clayton’s premise is chillingly realistic. The book does not focus on the politics, but instead focuses on regular Americans who not long before led totally normal lives, and who are quickly turned into refugees as they try to escape the crime and violence taking over the country. The scene at the Canadian border was highly believable, as was the deterioration of Mike and Marie’s relationship as it crumbled under the stress of their ordeal. Complicating matters is the need to protect their beautiful daughter Elly, who is naïve enough to wander off with any stranger.

CROSSING OVER should stand as a warning to anyone inclined to think that violence is the answer to political disagreement, as it paints a picture of how America could slide into chaos far too easily.

There is some mature subject matter and language. Recommended for readers who are brave enough to read it.


The chaos and violence of the second American civil war arrives in Mike McNerney’s town when knife-wielding thugs invade his home. He, his wife, and their disabled daughter, take to their camper to find refuge in Canada. Along the way they evade roving criminal gangs and warring militias. They finally reach the border only to find a large encampment of others, desperate to cross over to safety. With their money almost gone, an unscrupulous immigration official offers to usher them through … but will they pay his obscene price?

Author, Paul Clayton, is not the only one worried about a possible, second American civil war … What would that be like? Clayton’s gnat’s eye view, CROSSING OVER, offers a chilling, more-than-plausible look … at a future that nobody wants!

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    172 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    December 28, 2018
  4. Dimensions
    4 x 0.43 x 7 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1792839782
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1792839788
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (December 28, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 172 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1792839782
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1792839788
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4 x 0.43 x 7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 171 ratings

About the author

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Paul Clayton

Paul Clayton

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Paul Clayton is the author of a three-book historical series on the Spanish Conquest of the Floridas-- Calling Crow, Flight of the Crow, and Calling Crow Nation (Putnam/Berkley), and a novel, Carl Melcher Goes to Vietnam (St. Martin's Press), based on his own experiences in that war.

Carl Melcher Goes to Vietnam was a finalist at the 2001 Frankfurt eBook Awards, along with works by Joyce Carol Oates (Faithless), David McCullough (John Adams), and Alan Furst (The Kingdom of Shadows).

Clayton's historical novel -- White Seed: The Untold Story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke -- explores the mystery of the vanished English colonists on Roanoke Island. His realistic contemporary novel, In the Shape of a Man, explores the dark side of the go-go lifestyle of turn-of-the-century Silicon Valley workers.

Clayton's collection of traditional sci-fi and fantasy stories, Strange Worlds, pays homage to the sci-fi greats. Clayton’s novel, Van Ripplewink: You Can’t Go Home Again, is a modern twist on the classic Rip Van Winkle story, that wades into America’s current socio-racial dysfunction. Clayton's novella, Crossing Over, tells the story of the 2nd American civil war. His latest sci-fi collection, Talk to a Real, Live Girl, tells of a future world where the MeToo movement and the sophistication of robotic companions... collide with unforeseen and astounding consequences.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
171 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Thomas J. Madden Jr.
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent novel
Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2022
Verified Purchase
This is a very well written, timely, and frightening novel. I find it interesting that this author chooses to explore the idea of desperate Americans attempting to cross our Northern Border into Canada to escape chaos in the US, as opposed to folks from Mexico and other parts of the world trying to get across our Southern Border into the US. This really could happen. He seems to illustrate that while a lot of people on both sides of our political divide want to have a conflict, and actual Civil War, or even the build-up to one, would be worse than anyone imagined. It's interesting, there were folks who eagerly looked forward to conflict on both sides of the issues that led up to our last Civil War, and many on both sides thought the war would be swift and decisive, when in reality it turned into a 5 year long slugging match that devastated parts of the country. This book asks the question of whether a politically-motivated Civil War could happen in the US again, and the answers he provides are creepy and disturbing. I would love to see a sequel.
3 people found this helpful
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Kayak Jay
4.0 out of 5 stars Strange Story
Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2023
Verified Purchase
The book is short and has much slower to read. It is a description of time in the future where the government has gone bad. Most of the time is waiting to try to get to Canada. The is action is losing things and money. A young woman named as Ella is not entirely smart, but she is the good part of the story.
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C. Perelli-Minetti
3.0 out of 5 stars Depressing, just didn’t work
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2019
Verified Purchase
This was dystopian, but without a whole lot beyond just down, down. Passive people, sort of trying but not enterprising. Didn’t work for me. I kept hoping it would go somewhere, but it didn’t.
2 people found this helpful
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Michael Isenberg
5.0 out of 5 stars Be Careful What You Wish For
Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2019
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If you've been in an online political discussion recently, you've no doubt run into some loudmouth proclaiming, with scarcely-disguised glee, that the United States is headed for civil war. Paul Clayton has a warning for that guy: any such war would be horrifying and heartbreaking.

Clayton's new novella Crossing Over shows what such a war would look like from the point of view of a more or less typical middle class family, the McNerneys. The father, Mike, is, a retired, but still middle-aged, accountant. As law and order break down around them, the McNerneys must flee the life they spent decades building and head north in the family camper, hoping to cross over to Canada and safety. Along the way, Mike struggles to find food and supplies, keep his wife and daughter warm, and protect them from militia groups, thieves, corrupt immigration officials, and human smugglers who may or may not be trustworthy. His teenage daughter, Elly, is beautiful and outgoing, but suffers from mental retardation. As you can imagine, protecting her under these circumstances is particularly challenging.

When it's Americans who are fleeing, the plight of refugees appears in a whole new light. I won't sugar coat it--it's a tough read. But it's a must-read for anyone concerned about where this country is headed.
9 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Exciting Story
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2023
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This was a different type of book than I've read before. There was plenty of action and difficult situations. The characters were hard to like and didn't get along together very well.
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Maxine the Elder
5.0 out of 5 stars People need to be informed
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2022
Verified Purchase
5 stars for getting an important message out but the masses will not read it. The ones so eager for 'war' have no concept of what they are bragging about and the rest of the people have their heads stuck in the sand.
The same applies for any national catastrophe such as an EMP.
I do, however, get quite irritated at the women in these types of books being portrayed as idiots wanting to give away food and stop and help everyone. Sounds cold? It's survival. Trust no one.
4 people found this helpful
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Pat Patterson
3.0 out of 5 stars But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days!
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2019
I obtained this book through the Kindle Unlimited program, after receiving a request for a review.

Here's a summation: the nation has polarized over politics to the extent that commerce has been interrupted. The kind of riots that hit Charlottesville, VA, in August of 2017 now occur in every location, on a regular basis. Through some undefined mechanism, the sitting president was physically evicted from the White House, and now there are two competing governments, one sponsored by the states in the Northeast part of the country, and the other matching somewhat with states which had football teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference, along with a few SEC areas. (This I found to be far-fetched, BUT it was a plot device needed to make the story work)

Mike McNerny, 60ish and retired, is still trying to make sense of things. Almost all of the local businesses have closed down. Many of his neighbors have fled, due to their proximity to the city of Minneapolis, where it is reported that teen thugs are roving the streets in gangs. Without another safe haven in mind, Mike must attempt to persuade his wife Marie to load up their gear and flee to Canada, where there is no civil war. (I'm not sure this sort of person has a hope of survival. Essentially, he has done NO preparation; he ESPECIALLY has done no emotional prep work with his wife).

And now we come to the greatest weakness in Mike's plan. They have a beautiful 16 year old daughter, Elly, tall for her age, who has some sort of developmental delay. She has some cognitive skills at an 11 or 12 year old level, but my read of the way she seems to understand her environment leads me to believe that her social skills are more like that of a four year old. She is a friendly sort, which means she greets strangers cheerfully; and those, only seeing her physical beauty and her stature, might innocently come to the conclusion that the young woman is fully in control. An evil doer who recognizes her cognitive impairment, might quickly arrange to isolate her from her family, and kidnap her. She can't remember to keep the door locked, and to stay inside. (As it happens, I have known a young woman very much like this. She was physically beautiful, but had no sense of a need for safety. Because she was so cute, well-meaning people at church would talk to her and say "You are SUCH a cute little girl! Why don't you come home with me and be MY little girl?" And Sarah would say "okay," and be perfectly ready to walk out the door with them.

And sometimes it just doesn't seem to Mike that Marie has a grasp on just how things are on the road. (In real life., this much fighting in a crisis situation means you will die.)

It is the presence of Elly that makes this book different form all of the other 50,000 post-apocalyptic books out there. Mike can't make plans that don't include one adult devoting at LEAST half their attention to keeping Elly from making some innocent mistake that can get them all killed. Unfortunately, even before the crisis, Mike and Marie weren't having a unified purpose; the stress of raising a daughter who learned very slowly compared to others has challenged more than one family; it uses splits them apart, or drives them much closer.

There is more to the book, but the inclusion of THAT particular reality is something I don't recall seeing anywhere else. In 2011, the CDC said that 1 out of 7 American school children had some sort of developmental disability. Most are not as severe as that faced by Elly's family, but here's the deal: If you happen to be one of those people who are looking forward to a coming revolution, consider how you will prepare for all the Ellys. Also, consider how you will brawl in the streets, and still provide care of the elderly in nursing homes. If your program for a return to a simpler nation means you plan on allowing the most needy elements of society to quietly be put aside, go ahead and tell us now. If not, show us your plan. We'd love to see it.

I found the book dismal and unrealistic. I couldn't fit Mike and Maria's continued survival to the amount of cash they had on hand. Mike had a .38 Special snub-nosed revolver, but he never once used it effectively. If you plan on using a firearm, you MUST learn how to use it and train with it. The idea that he would be carrying the pistol around in his pocket, yet never mention to Marie that he had it, was unrealistic.
However, the additional burdens that the family struggled under, due to Elly's disability, kept me reading past the point when I would normally have discarded it.
7 people found this helpful
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Colorado Skier
2.0 out of 5 stars Flat writing, dim-witted characters
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2023
Verified Purchase
Sorry but I was glad it was ended when I finished it. As a class c Rv owner author got a lot of things wrong. Lack of potable water came up but was never mentioned again. Heating a rig in cold weather would burn through a propane tank in a few days. Not to mention dumping the black tank. Etc etc etc. although I did like shoving the cane through the wheels of the wheelchair……..
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Jennie goguen
4.0 out of 5 stars Crossing over
Reviewed in Canada on December 3, 2020
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What l liked was all the action in this book also by reading you actually learned a lot of survival if you were in that predicament thought it was a well written book and l will read more of this kind of books because of it
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Lynette E. Hanley
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting dystopian story
Reviewed in Australia on February 26, 2023
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The United States of America is now a violent dystopian country with gangs , lack of supplies and scary beyond belief . People are trying to flee to Canada . An interesting story.
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