Buckeye BOOK REVIEW

• Date Published:
  September, 2025
• Length:
  451 pages—Listening Time: 15 hr 44 minutes
• Genre:
  Fiction, Historical Fiction
• Setting:
  1940s-1970s; primarily set in Bonhomie, Ohio
• Awards:
  The Guardian Book of the Day 2025-09-04; Read with Jenna September2025
• Languages:
  English
• Sensitive Aspects:
  Abuse, parental neglect, homophobia, bullying, profanity, sexual identity struggles, adolescent mental health challenges, physical violence, references to self-harm, substance abuse, and graphic depictions of trauma
• Movie:
  There is no public information about a movie deal for Patrick Ryan's novel Buckeye at this time.
• Recommended for Book Club:
  Yes. Excellent read!

Some books sneak up on you quietly, almost shy about their power. Buckeye by Patrick Ryan isn’t one of them, it strides right in, sits across from you, and starts telling a story so vivid you swear you can smell the summer air and hear the cicadas buzzing. I didn’t just read this novel; I lived inside it for a while. I carried its characters around like extra baggage (the good kind), and even now, days later, they keep tapping me on the shoulder, reminding me how absolutely brilliant they are.

Ryan has this uncanny gift for writing about the past without dressing it up in nostalgia or letting it tip into bitterness. Instead, he creates moments that are so authentic—awkward, tender, and occasionally heartfelt—that they resonate deeply within you. And while Buckeye hums with small-town familiarity, it’s not a postcard from a prettier version of the truth. It’s sharp-eyed, deeply human, and anchored in the messy contradictions of family, friendship, and figuring out who you are.

If you’ve ever stood in the kitchen long after a family dinner’s ended, talking about the things you thought you’d never say out loud, or if you’ve ever driven past your childhood home and thought, “If those walls could talk…”—this book will find its way into your bones.

What struck me most wasn’t just the storytelling, but the emotional precision. Ryan knows when to linger with a sentence until your breath catches, as well as when to sprint through a scene so fast you feel the rush in your own pulse. In the end, Buckeye is about those rare connections—in families, in small towns, in the memories we carry—that outlast the years and sometimes defy understanding.

This is a novel I can’t wait to talk about. And believe me, there’s plenty to say.

In the fictional town of Bonhomie, Ohio, on May 8, 1945—VE Day—a single impulsive kiss between two married people sets in motion a sweeping family saga that will echo across five decades of American life. Cal Jenkins, a man haunted by shame over his inability to serve in World War II due to a congenital leg deformity, and Margaret Salt, a woman whose husband, Felix, is stationed on a Navy cargo ship in the Pacific, share a moment of passion sparked by the euphoric news of Allied victory. In a small town, however, nothing stays hidden forever, and this fleeting encounter will ripple through their marriages and profoundly shape the next generation of both the Jenkins and Salt families.

Patrick Ryan crafts an intimate American epic by weaving together the lives of four unforgettable characters: Cal and his spiritually gifted wife, Becky, who possesses the rare ability to communicate with the dead and helps grieving families connect with lost loved ones; and Margaret alongside Felix, each carrying their own hidden struggles and secrets. The narrative moves with graceful patience, tracing each character's backstory—from Margaret's childhood in an orphanage to Felix's experiences aboard a torpedoed cargo ship—before bringing their stories together at that pivotal moment in the hardware store basement.

What follows is a tender, heartbreaking exploration of how chance, desire, and the uncompromising societal expectations of mid-century America shape human connection across generations. Through births and losses, marriages and betrayals, the novel examines the twisted roads people take toward forgiveness, redemption, and that indomitable longing to truly know and be known by another person.

Here are a few reasons that Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan, deserves your attention:

It captures the bittersweet truth of coming home.

Ryan writes about return—physical, emotional, and moral—with aching honesty. The story resonates deeply for anyone who’s ever left a small town and felt the pull of unfinished memory waiting there.

The characters feel like people you know.

They’re flawed, tender, often funny, and unmistakably real. Ryan’s gift is in letting small gestures—a nervous glance, a phone call gone wrong—reveal whole worlds of love and regret.

It balances heartbreak with humor.

There’s sadness here, but also laughter that sneaks up on you exactly when you need it. The tone reflects the way real life feels, rarely one thing or another, but a mixture that leaves you breathless and grateful.

The writing is spare but luminous.

Every sentence counts. Ryan distills big emotions into the smallest moments, leaving quiet echoes that stay with you long after the story ends.

It explores forgiveness with grace.

Without preaching, simplifying or melodrama, Buckeye asks what it means to forgive yourself and others. It’s a story about the complicated beauty of second chances—and how they don’t always come the way we expect.

Get Patrick Ryan Books

Patrick Ryan’s novels are emotionally engaging, psychologically astute explorations of family, love, war, and the consequences of desire, often set against sweeping social change and marked by compassion, humor, and masterful character work.

Purchase Patrick Ryan Books on Bookshop.org

Here are thoughtful, voice-driven novels with small-town settings, entwined families, long arcs across mid‑century America, and themes of secrecy, desire, and the costs of conformity—good companions for Buckeye.

• Empire Falls by Richard Russo
  A wry, compassionate portrait of a fading mill town where tangled family histories, class resentments, and thwarted ambitions shape one man’s bid to choose a different life. The novel’s small‑town intimacy, moral ambiguity, and multigenerational secrets echo Buckeye’s tender scrutiny of ordinary people under quiet pressures.
  
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
  Two cousins chase creative glory in mid‑century New York while wrestling with identity, reinvention, and history’s upheavals. Its sweep through WWII and postwar America, paired with intimate character work and hidden truths, mirrors Buckeye’s blend of epic canvas and personal cost.
  
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
  Linked stories explore how Vietnam war trauma fractures memory, masculinity, and the stories we tell to live with what we’ve done. Readers drawn to Buckeye’s meditations on wartime absence, aftermath, and fathers and sons will find resonant emotional terrain here.
  
• A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
  Vietnamese émigré voices grapple with loss, memory, and the shadow of war as they rebuild lives in America. Like Buckeye, it traces how history crosses into households, complicating love, loyalty, and the fragile stories families use to endure.
  
• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
  During a quiet pandemic summer, a mother revisits her youthful love and the detours that formed a family, revealing the bittersweet bargains of adulthood. The reflective tone, time’s long arc, and gentle unmasking of old secrets align with Buckeye’s elegiac mood.
  
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
  Siblings circle a childhood home and a legacy of choices that refuse to stay buried, testing loyalty and forgiveness across decades. Its elegant, time‑layered narration and fascination with inheritance—emotional and material—will appeal to Buckeye readers.
  
• Little Children by Tom Perrotta
  In a seemingly placid suburb, private longings and impulsive acts ripple outward, exposing the gap between public roles and messy inner lives. The humane yet unsparing look at desire, marriage, and consequence pairs naturally with Buckeye’s thorny dilemmas.
  
• Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
  A community revisits a beloved man’s life and the consoling fictions that shored him up, uncovering the tenderness and harm in well‑meant secrets. Its lyrical attention to ordinary grace and regret complements Buckeye’s gentle, melancholy register.
  
• The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
  A middle‑aged writer sifts through past choices and present estrangements over a single weekend, letting quiet epiphanies accumulate. Readers who admired Buckeye’s clear‑eyed view of flawed but recognizably human lives may appreciate Ford’s understated candor.
  
• The Known World by Edward P. Jones
  A polyphonic, morally intricate novel about a Black slaveholder in antebellum Virginia and the web of relationships he inhabits. Its panoramic yet intimate structure and refusal to sort people into heroes and villains echo Buckeye’s ethical complexity.
  
• Absolution by Alice McDermott
  American women in 1960s Saigon navigate charity, complicity, and the stories they tell themselves about goodness and harm. The novel’s nuanced attention to memory, accountability, and the limits of understanding resonates with Buckeye’s interest in consequence and forgiveness.
  
• The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
  After a global, inexplicable loss, a town wrestles with grief, faith, and the daily business of carrying on. Beneath the premise lies a precise study of family fractures and communal strain that will feel familiar to readers of Buckeye’s small‑town tapestry.