Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
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.
REVIEWS
“Omniscient, sweeping, almost defiantly sentimental, Buckeye is a reminder of the deep pleasure of following a cast of characters over their entire lives, through births, deaths, marriages, tragedies and, in this case, hard-won reconciliations. . . The author clearly loves these people, and he makes the safe bet that you will, too.”—The New York Times Book Review
“[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
PRODUCT DETAILS
Trade Paperback
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 978-0593595039
Pages: 464