Review: Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
- amiller8979
- Sep 18
- 4 min read
by Amber Miller
September 18, 2025
One of the most sentimental novels I’ve ever read. Buckeye is full of love and war and the perilous intimacies of small-town life.
Buckeye is a poignant and beautifully crafted novel set in a time when life was as full of sacrifice and hope as it was of uncertainty. Author Patrick Ryan transports readers to the fictional town of Bonhomie, Ohio, telling the story of two couples, Cal & Becky Jenkins and Margaret & Felix Salt, whose paths cross on the home front during World War II and remain intertwined for decades after.
Through the eyes of Ryan’s characters, we are drawn into a world where the errancy of human attraction and the catastrophic effects of war come to life. Buckeye delves into themes of love, loss, infidelity, racism, and homophobia, but what truly sets it apart is how it evokes a deep sense of nostalgia for a time both lost and cherished. It is a story of relationships, both hidden and visible —husbands and wives, mothers and sons, sons and fathers, friends and brothers, lovers and friends.
The characters are vivid, relatable, flawed, and remarkably easy to love. The story unfolds as Cal, whose uneven legs render him unfit for military service, falls in love with and marries Becky, who has been gifted the ability to communicate with the dead. Meanwhile, Margaret, who spent the majority of her childhood in the orphanage, where she was abandoned as an infant, grows into a stunning young woman ready to escape her childhood and enter adulthood in the big city of Columbus. There, she meets and marries the respectable, handsome ex-college football player turned executive, Felix.
Margaret, in particular, is a compelling protagonist whose personal growth mirrors the societal shifts of the time. She begins the story as a young woman eager to escape the confines of her orphanage upbringing and small town. After marriage and motherhood, the reader expects Margaret to gradually appreciate the value of home and family, and prays she will finally put the lingering question of why she was an unwanted child to rest, only to be disappointed when she never reaches that point. Margaret was stuck in a pattern of avoiding her past. Avoiding telling Felix about her childhood until it was too late. Avoiding telling Lydia about her present until it was too late. Avoiding telling Tom about what prevented her from allowing herself to love him unconditionally in the way only a parent could, and why she left him, until it was too late.
Having quickly emerged as the novel's most colorful character (and my personal favorite), Cal’s reclusive father, Everett, is a World War I veteran forever scarred by his time in service. Everett represents the quiet strength of the many WWI veterans who carried invisible wounds after returning to a society that never fully understood their trauma.
The old man was 61, had lived under 14 presidents (six of them from Ohio), and, through his vision teeming with floaters and cataracts, he’d been writing letters to all of them since Woodrow Wilson. He had no interest in barbers; he cut his own hair, let his graying beard grow wide and wiry. He was thin: if you were to encounter him naked, you would see his bones poking to get out, not because of any ailment but because food was an afterthought to him now that he lived alone. ~Cal Jenkins
I laughed out loud when Everett referred to his grandsons (and quite a few politicians) as “shitbirds” and cried when he simultaneously lost his dog and his house. My heart broke when he sat with Becky in the parlor, and the spirits of his lost loved ones had no words for him, and it warmed when he started a book club with his fellow Western readers. In his final letter to President Johnson, questioning the “slow-moving pace at which the country was making its way to basic fairness for all”, he admitted that, “aside from his decision to remove air cover for the men he sent to Cuba and his obsession with the moon”, he liked President Kennedy. After writing this final letter, he passed away, and upon finding him, Becky ensured the letter was mailed.
While reading Buckeye and connecting with the character of Everett, I was overcome with acute nostalgia for my grandfather, a Dayton, Ohio native, Pearl Harbor Survivor, and retired Navy chief. It brought back so many memories of the man my Papa was and what endeared me to him. It also provided a window into the experiences that shaped him as a young man growing up in the Great Depression and then serving his country for over 20 years.
Remember how my grandad and my pop-pop were vets who had been to war and fought in it and all that, and your dad? Why didn't they ever talk about it? Why didn't they tell us how awful it was? I don’t have a single memory of any of them talking about it or how awful it was. I keep wondering why they wouldn't want us to know? ~Skip Jenkins
Ryan’s use of historical details, terms, and trends—rationing, war bonds, the atomic bomb, factories, comic books, cafeterias, communism, the Zenith, dance halls, the Balboa & Hokey Pokey, Kennedy’s funeral, Vietnam, and the draft—grounds the novel in its historical context. But more than just a backdrop, the history becomes the heartbeat of the story, shaping characters' motivations and fears, as well as their relationships. Buckeye feels strikingly real, with characters and situations that mirror some of the most tragic events in American history while simultaneously capturing the mundane beauty of everyday life.
Thank you, Patrick Ryan, for venturing into adulthood and for acknowledging the significance of librarians in Buckeye.
If you enjoyed Buckeye, I also recommend:
The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo
Hello Beautiful, by Ann Napolitano
Spectacular Things, Beck Dorey-Stein
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