Buckeye (Read with Jenna Pick)

by Patrick Ryan Narrated by Michael Crouch

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Love and war, births and deaths, coming together and falling apart — this intimate portrait of small-town, midcentury America is a must-read. The writing is both straightforward and poetic, and the story is compelling, cathartic and expertly crafted.

A multigenerational family drama akin to the Pulitzer Prize winners Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, this book is destined to join the canon of Great American Novels.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ¿ READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY ¿ A “mesmerizing” (People) novel that weaves the intimate lives of two midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century.

“A glorious sweep of a novel.”-Ann Patchett
“Captivating.”-The New York Times Book Review
“A once-in-a-decade novel . . . I fell in love with these characters.”-Jenna Bush Hager

One town. Two families. A secret that changes everything.

In Bonhomie, Ohio, 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 they've lost. Margaret's husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship, out of harm's way-until a telegram suggests that the unthinkable might have happened.

Later, as the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie-but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to reexamine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

“[A] luminous and tender 20th-century saga of wounded souls and small-town secrets.”—The Guardian

“The combination of unconventional sex lives, sardonic wit and 20th-century American history recalls the early novels of John Irving . . . Ultimately, the triumph of his book is the way it captures the nature of mistakes, both the holes dug and the bridges built.”—Financial Times

“Enhanced with a hazy sentimentality, Ryan’s quiet drama conjures moral complexities behind the facade of carefully crafted mid-century lives.”—The Washington Post

“This mesmerizing, tender novel follows two Ohio families from the 1920s through the ’60s as they find and lose love and loved ones through what one character aptly calls ‘the unraveling of time.’”—People, “Must-Read Books of Fall”

“Well-crafted and poignant . . . Buckeye draws the reader into its time and place and simply beguiles. This chronicle of leaving and loss, loving and forgiving, burns slowly and hopefully until the end.”—BookPage

“Buckeye is a thing of wonder. It’s my book of the year. I couldn’t love it more.”—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark

“‘Involving’ and ‘unbelievably well-written’ are the best ways to describe Buckeye. It’s the kind of book that reads like the culmination of a writer’s career—a magnum opus of depth and care.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Buckeye is epic, and it is heartfelt . . . [It] will surely come to be regarded as one of the best novels of the year.”—The Anniston Star

“Buckeye offers just about everything I look for in a great story: a vivid setting, historical sweep, rich characters who break your heart even as they make you laugh and all of this in abundance.”—Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and the North Bath trilogy

“Heartfelt and at times harrowing, Buckeye is both an absorbing portrait of an American past and a sympathetic exploration of what continues to sustain us and to plague us.”—Alice McDermott, author of Absolution

“I’ve been yearning for a novel that connects the American generations who dealt with our two wars—one of Omaha Beach, the other of the la Drang Valley. Buckeye is that book, and it soars.”—Tom Hanks

“Patrick Ryan conjures a vanished America with uncanny skill and writes with deep insight and lyrical intelligence…This is a novel to settle in with, a world unto itself.”—Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children

“A deeply compassionate book . . . Patrick Ryan tells a story we very much need right now: how forgiveness might creep up—despite everything—over time, tender and elusive and ever-complex.”—Emily Fridlund, author of History of Wolves

“Patrick Ryan has created a world, and characters, that exist inside me now, and as a reader that is my deepest joy. I could not recommend this book more highly.”—Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful

“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

“Filled with wit and emotion on every page, this is a stirring paean to the joys and sorrows of family.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“[A] tale that comes across as absolutely authentic and deeply satisfying.”—Booklist, starred review

Kirkus Reviews

2025-07-04
Two couples confront the consequences of infidelity in small-town, post–World War II Ohio.

Over a span of more than 30 years, the small fictional town of Bonhomie provides the setting for this quiet story about the lives of two families irrevocably changed by a brief affair. Cal Jenkins, precluded from military service by a congenital orthopedic condition, marries hometown girl Becky Hanover and takes a job managing her father’s hardware store. Becky discovers that she possesses the power to communicate with the afterlife and conducts free seances in the couple’s home. Their otherwise unremarkable lives are forever upended after a brief encounter between Cal and Margaret Salt in the store on VE Day leads to a romantic entanglement. Margaret and her husband, Felix, arrived in Bonhomie in 1939, when his employer brought him there to help manage its aluminum plant, but as the war in Europe reaches its end they’ve been separated for more than two years by Felix’s decision to enlist in the Navy and his assignment to a cargo ship in the Pacific. Ryan skillfully explores his characters’ emotional vulnerabilities, among them Calvin’s insecurity about his physical impairment and his disappointment over his inability to serve his country; Becky’s ambivalence about her spiritual gift; Margaret’s psychological scars from having been abandoned by her mother mere days after her birth and a childhood spent shuttling between an orphanage and foster homes; and Felix’s issues with his sexual identity. The fallout from Calvin and Margaret’s brief affair reverberates through the lives of these families in a booming postwar America as each goes on to raise a son who must face the prospect of serving in the Vietnam War. In subtly different ways, Ryan creates considerable sympathy for each of his characters while taking care not to tip the scale in favor of any one of them. The novel’s only flaw is a deliberate pace that may leave many readers wishing it had proceeded more swiftly to its undeniably moving final scenes.

An earnest and empathetic family drama.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193442530
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/02/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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