The Crossing
is a powerful and haunting love story of surprising discovery set in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen during Prohibition. Irish-born Johnny Flynn, a former British soldier, is banished from his homeland and sent to America on a ship so riddled with disease that he realizes the voyage was meant to murder him. When he survives the trip, the captain forces him to walk the plank into the Hudson River. Miraculously, an Irish gang, the Swamp Angels, rescues Johnny and gives him a job running whiskey in Hell’s Kitchen just as Prohibition makes liquor a hugely profitable, dangerous business. Fighting for his life and livelihood, Johnny is plagued by the memory of his lost lover, Nora, whose father, the famed Irish revolutionary, James Connolly, met his death by a firing squad that included a reluctant gunman named Johnny Flynn. Nora’s last words to him, when she learned of his betrayal and left him, “I love you, Johnny Flynn,” echo in his heart, leaving him pulsing with guilt, yearning, and hoping that she might yet forgive him.