Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
- Random House, 2025
- Kindle ed., 451 pages
- ISBN 978-0-59-359504-6
My last read of the year turned out to be one of the best books I read in 2025.
Buckeye by Patrick Ryan is my favorite kind of novel: old-fashioned storytelling from an omniscient narrator, a multi-generational family saga that follows characters over the courses of their lives.
Ryan sets his novel in the fictional small town of Bonhomie, Ohio. Its focus on the people who live there immediately reminded me of Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 novel Winesburg, Ohio.
Buckeye concentrates on two families:
- Cal and Becky Jenkins and their son, Skip
- Felix and Margaret Salt and their son, Tom
Cal Jenkins was born with one leg 2 inches shorter than the other. Cal’s father, a World War I veteran, remarked at the time that when the next war came around, Cal’s deformity would keep him from participating. When Cal marries Becky, her father installs Cal as manager of the town’s hardware store, one of several businesses he owns.
Becky has an unusual ability to contact people who have died and who want to assure their loved ones left behind that they are all right. Becky doesn’t charge for her services, but she does feel obligated to pass along the spirits’ news to their grieving survivors. When Becky nearly dies delivering their first child, doctors tell her she should not have more children. Cal and Becky name their only child, a boy, Calvin, Jr., and call him Skip.
Felix Salt, an engineer, can’t understand why he isn’t attracted to women. When a beautiful redhead named Margaret agrees to marry him, he’s sure she will cure whatever is wrong with him. When the U.S. enters World War II, Felix, because of his education, is assigned to a ship sent to the South Pacific.
Margaret was abandoned as a newborn, left in a basket at an orphanage. She was raised by the unmarried woman who ran the orphanage, but the question of why her mother abandoned her continues to haunt her.
The novel opens in 1945, when Margaret Salt walks into the hardware store in Bonhomie and asks the manager to turn on the radio. They learn that the world is celebrating V-E Day, and Margaret plants a celebratory kiss on Cal’s cheek that initiates the events that will tie these two families together.
When Margaret receives a notification that her husband is unaccounted for in the South Pacific, her feelings of abandonment escalate. But Felix returns home and settles back into life with Margaret. Several months later she gives birth to a son whom they name Tom. But Margaret can never come to terms with her own past; eventually she leaves Felix and Tom to go searching for a life of her own.
Skip and Tom grow up together in Bonhomie. Skip, two years the older, is big, handsome, and athletic. Tom is skinny and unassertive. When, in high school, Skip notices that other boys bully Tom, he takes to defending him. The bullies stop picking on Tom, knowing that if they mistreat Tom they’ll have to face Skip.
These are the bare bones of a story rich in context and detail in which characters examine big existential questions of life, love, and responsibility. Themes of intergenerational trauma and the savageness of war permeate the lives of people trying their best to figure out how to live with themselves and with each other in a world that isn’t always fair, joyful, or just.
No review and do Buckeye justice. To appreciate it fully, you’ll have to read it for yourself.
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
