An unusually rich and satisfying reading experience

Although the articles about the novel were positive and although it is set in Ohio, "the Buckeye State," and I grew up in Ohio, I wasn't sure I wanted to read any more 445-page novels. (Don't disparage the way I choose what to read or skip. It mostly works for me.)

Patrick Ryan's doorstop of a novel Buckeye arrives with high praise (but then, doesn't every novel?). He is author of two story collections and is editor-in-chief of One Story magazine. From short stories to a long novel is noteworthy in itself.

Buckeye's action all takes place in Ohio with the exception of an interval in the South Pacific during WWII.  Otherwise we're in an orphanage east of Columbus, in he fictional town of Bonhomie, and in Columbus, Toledo, and even Cedar Point.

While the action is not strictly chronological, it takes place from roughly the early 1930s to the 1970s and Ryan seamlessly weaves in news and cultural events as time markers and indicators how how American society and culture changed during the period. All this makes an unusually rich and satisfying reading experience.

We follow the lives of four main characters, all around the same age. and get to know well several others as well. Cal was born with one leg shorter than the other so he is ineligible for the WWII draft. Becky is able under certain conditions to hear the voices of the dead. Felix is gay, something he does not understand and, for years, ignores (homosexual activities are, after all, illegal). Infant Margaret is abandoned by her mother at an orphanage and although three families take her in none keep her so her closest relationship is with the orphanage director.

In one sense—and I believe the strength of the novel—none of these people are exceptional. They do not do great things. They do their best with who they are and what they know and what they feel. In another sense of course they are all extraordinary and their lives engaging and moving for 445 pages. Becky takes no compensation whatever when she uses her gift to help someone. She and Cal marry and have a son. Felix feels the pressure to be "normal." marries Margaret, and takes her to Bonhomie. He is drafted into the Navy, made an officer, and serves on a supply ship in the Pacific. He and Margaret have a son, Tom.

I am deliberately sketching the action lightly so that readers will find as much pleasure and surprise and anguish as I did in the characters' thoughts, actions, beliefs about themselves and reality. I cannot improve Ann Patchett's cover blurb,  Burkeye is "A glorious sweep of a novel."