The impact of war on a small town in the U.S. is at the heart of Buckeye, Patrick Ryan's epic first novel for adults, but it's the struggles, forgiveness, and hopefulness that resonate as the Jenkins and Salt families confront global and personal challenges.
It's June 1945, and Bonhomie, Ohio, is celebrating President Truman's radio broadcast announcing Germany's surrender when Cal Jenkins and Margaret Salt meet. As they share this moment in Bonhomie, where "most everyone felt as if they'd laid eyes on most everyone else," they never imagine that their futures will eventually intertwine.
Buckeye then turns to the other conflicts weighing on its protagonists: Cal and his wife, Becky; Margaret and her husband, Felix. Son of an eccentric World War I veteran, Cal is embarrassed by his ineligibility to serve. Meanwhile, Felix volunteers for the navy, hoping the military might "reset" his closeted "proclivity," but returns as one of the "guys who won't talk about" his experience. Kindhearted Becky is a spiritualist, connecting her clients with loved ones but creating a schism with skeptic Cal. Both couples raise sons in peaceful 1950s Bonhomie, where only Margaret knows the truth of her son Tom's paternity; the revelation, a decade after his birth, upends the families. As the boys become teenagers, more combat rages, and the Vietnam War draft comes for them.
Heartache abounds for the flawed but sympathetic characters in this sensitively detailed novel, but love heals. As Buckeye concludes in 1981, Becky reflects on years of communicating with spirits, noting what they "most often conveyed was love and forgiveness," and concluding that these must be "the two most important things in the world." --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.