Buckeye

This is a novel that when concluded leaves the reader bereft, but enriched by the themes, characters and insight it reveals. The novel is one that unravels slowly, but provokes such deep thought, I found myself annotating it as I read – marking paragraphs for re-examination and future reflection.

Though released in Hardcover, Ebook and Audiobook formats in September 2025, it will be available in mass-market paperback in September 2026.  

Buckeye is an account of two couples [the Jenkins and the Salts], and their associated families in small-town America. Set in the fictional town of Bonhomie, Ohio - it vividly marks the passage of time between the overseas wars that stained the two families, and of their community [and country].

Everett Jenkins returns from the First World War in Europe damaged in what we now term PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Distress], but back then was termed ‘shell shock’.  Fate further damaged him, by taking his wife Dora, and two of his children by Pneumonia and Influenza, leaving him with his remaining child, Cal [‘Calvin’]. The boy has a congenital deformity. One leg is a couple of inches shorter than the other, bestowing him with a limp. After the attack on Pearl Harbour, Cal attempts to enlist when an outraged America enters World War Two - but is illegible as he is denoted a 4F after failing the army medical [much to the relief of his father Everett]. When he turns 18, Cal moves out of his father’s house on Compton Road, unable to cope with Everett’s increasing erratic behaviour. He will meet Becky [‘Rebecca’] Hanover and thanks to her father Roman, starts to work in their hardware shop.

Meanwhile a baby girl is left outside ‘Open Arms’ orphanage in Doyle [a nearby Ohio town] in a basket for the kindly manager Lydia.  The baby girl is given the adopted name ‘Margaret’ though referred to trivially as ‘firefly’ due to her shock of red-hair.  When she grows, Margaret leaves the small town Doyle heading for the Big City. She will meet the handsome Felix Salt in Columbus, and they will marry. Felix works in Production for Tuck and Sons in their Aluminium smelter and is soon promoted which entails relocation from big city Columbus to small-town Bonhomie, a move that poses issues for Margaret.

Ryan’s novel then weaves to the life in Bonhomie while WW2 reverberates in Europe and the Pacific. The two families lives’ collide, and their fates intertwine as the War intrudes. Children are born, and the Salts and Jenkins lives become striated as both families try to make sense of the world around them.

Then we will see America, tarnished by further conflicts in South East Asia as tragedy and hope merge.

When I put the book down, my eyes were wet.

BRAVO PATRICK RYAN 

Editor’s Note: “Buckeye” is a brown nut from a North American tree native to Ohio. The equivalent in Great Britain is the “Conker” - the brown nut of the European Water Chestnut tree.