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"Wise and heartbreaking" (Ann Napolitano), this captivating epic weaves the intimate lives of two Midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century.
In the small Ohio town of Bonhomie, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal's wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: she is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those whom they've lost. Margaret's husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship; she will soon learn that he may have perished in a predawn attack in the Philippine Sea.
As the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie, but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Twenty-five years later, as another war convulses America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter set in motion a series of events that will upend the next generation of both families as they head toward a new century.
Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love, and for goodness. "Buckeye is a glorious sweep of a novel, full of love and war and the perilous intimacies of smalltown life. It's funny and tender, realistic and strange. Patrick Ryan has long been one of my favorite writers. I have a feeling that with this book he's going to be everyone's favorite writer."-Ann Patchett
"I love this novel with my entire heart. Patrick Ryan has created a world, and characters, that exist inside me now, and as a reader that is my deepest joy. Buckeye tells the story of two families across sixty years of American history; the novel is wise and heartbreaking and full of wonderful characters who struggle across decades-as we all do-to live as their whole selves. I could not recommend this book more highly."-Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful Patrick Ryan is the author of the novel Buckeye. He is also the author of the story collections The Dream Life of Astronauts (named one of the Best Books of the Year by the St. Louis Times-Dispatch, LitHub, Refinery 29, and Electric Literature, and was longlisted for The Story Prize) and Send Me. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, the anthology Tales of Two Cities, and elsewhere. The former associate editor of Granta, he is the editor of the literary magazine One Story and lives in New York City.
In the small Ohio town of Bonhomie, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal's wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: she is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those whom they've lost. Margaret's husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship; she will soon learn that he may have perished in a predawn attack in the Philippine Sea.
As the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie, but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Twenty-five years later, as another war convulses America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter set in motion a series of events that will upend the next generation of both families as they head toward a new century.
Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love, and for goodness. "Buckeye is a glorious sweep of a novel, full of love and war and the perilous intimacies of smalltown life. It's funny and tender, realistic and strange. Patrick Ryan has long been one of my favorite writers. I have a feeling that with this book he's going to be everyone's favorite writer."-Ann Patchett
"I love this novel with my entire heart. Patrick Ryan has created a world, and characters, that exist inside me now, and as a reader that is my deepest joy. Buckeye tells the story of two families across sixty years of American history; the novel is wise and heartbreaking and full of wonderful characters who struggle across decades-as we all do-to live as their whole selves. I could not recommend this book more highly."-Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful Patrick Ryan is the author of the novel Buckeye. He is also the author of the story collections The Dream Life of Astronauts (named one of the Best Books of the Year by the St. Louis Times-Dispatch, LitHub, Refinery 29, and Electric Literature, and was longlisted for The Story Prize) and Send Me. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, the anthology Tales of Two Cities, and elsewhere. The former associate editor of Granta, he is the editor of the literary magazine One Story and lives in New York City.