After Reading Buckeye by Patrick Ryan

After Reading Buckeye by Patrick Ryan: 15 Lessons on Identity, Belonging, and Personal Growth

Some novels tell a story. Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan, tells the truth — the kind of truth that only fiction can reach, the kind that hides in the spaces between what people say and what they actually mean.
Set in the fictional small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, Buckeye follows two families — the Salts and the Jenkinses — across five decades of American life, from the closing days of World War II through the 1980s. It begins with a single impulsive kiss on V-E Day between Cal Jenkins, a man who couldn’t serve in the war because of a congenital leg difference, and Margaret Salt, whose husband Felix is stationed in the Pacific. That moment of reckless passion sets in motion a story about secrets, shame, identity, belonging, and the ways that one choice can reverberate through generations.
Patrick Ryan writes about ordinary people with extraordinary empathy. His characters are flawed, tender, funny, and heartbreakingly real. Cal, who spends his life feeling diminished by the thing that kept him from war. Becky, Cal’s wife, whose gift for communicating with the dead makes her an outsider in her own community. Felix, whose closeted homosexuality forces him to live a double life. Margaret, abandoned as an infant, forever searching for a sense of belonging she can never quite find.
These are not dramatic heroes. They are people — the kind you might pass in a grocery store without a second glance. And that’s what makes Buckeye so powerful. It finds the epic in the everyday, the universal in the particular, and the extraordinary courage it takes to be an ordinary person in a world that doesn’t always make room for who you really are.


Grab a copy of this book now!