what we read: Picking Up the Pieces of One's Own Mistakes

Title: Buckeye

Author: Patrick Ryan

First, a brief description of this weighty novel from the publisher:

"In the jubilant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, shares a single, life-altering moment with Margaret Salt, a woman determined to outrun her past. Cal is married to Becky, whose spiritual gifts help the living speak to the dead, while Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving at sea, believed to be safe—until a telegram suggests otherwise.

What begins as a fleeting transgression becomes a complex secret that irrevocably binds all four of them in unexpected ways. As their small Ohio town remakes itself in the postwar boom, the Salt and Jenkins families remain in each other’s orbit, and the consequences of choices made long ago begin to emerge, reshaping their lives in ways that will forever impact the next generation.

Sweeping yet intimate, resplendent with moments of deep emotion and unforgettable characters, Buckeye is a transportive story of love, loyalty, sacrifice, and forgiveness."

Insights and Opinions

This is one of those novels that breaks through the clutter of modern life and is suddenly seen and talked about everywhere. A Read with Jenna book club pick touted as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, People, the Minnesota Star Tribune, and the Chicago Public Library, it quickly rose to a prime spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. And of course any author who can wrangle advance-praise blurbs for their book jacket from the likes of Alice McDermott, Richard Russo, Ann Napolitano, and Ann Patchett is twenty-six steps ahead of the game before the game has even begun.

Cal Jenkins is a man whose club foot keeps him from joining the armed forces during World War II, diminishing his sense of himself as a man. His wife Becky has a gift for communicating with the dead, a gift her husband Cal doesn't understand. Margaret Salt is blessed with great beauty and cursed by a childhood abandonment that leaves a deep, unhealed wound. Her husband Felix values his wife but craves the love of a man who dies too soon. Each of these couples has a son and these sons will find one another and form an unbreakable bond.

+ Still reeling from the grievous harm done to our community by the lawless tactics deployed by ICE and still underway, we were grateful to spend time in each other's company talking about something other than The Thing. What is it about this book that has swept the nation? What makes it special?

+ Lois, who grew up in a small town, related to the culture. "This novel takes you into the interior life of people you would never know or would never know about if you lived in a small town. It gives you a sense of 'otherness' that you would never see growing up in a small town. We never knew anyone who was gay. We didn't even know what that was. In a small town, one's inner life has to be guarded carefully because if one person knows, everybody knows."

+ Margy loved the sweep of the novel and Linda agreed, saying "This is an old-fashioned American novel. Characters are developed. You follow a cast of characters through their entire lives -- birth, loves, marriage, death -- you see them and know them through the decades." Liz agreed. "This is not a constipated, interior novel like so many modern literary works are."

" To Lois, Ryan's work makes the reader feel as if you are living through it yourself.

+ Liz pointed out that it's a novel of a particular time as well as place. At that time, a man like Felix could not afford to be gay. And the lives of husbands and wives were so much more separated than they are now. Cal is aware of Becky's clients coming and going, taking advantage of her services as a medium, but he doesn't get it. He allows it but doesn't support it. When a saddened Becky seeks comfort from her mother, her mother says "Oh, pumpkin. You'll find a squirrel who can sing 'Mairzy Doats' before you find a man who takes you seriously."

+ To Margy, it is Cal who centers the book. "He is the heart of the novel, both literally and metaphorically. Think about the name of the town. It's Bonhomie, which is French for "good man," and Cal is that good man."

+ The character of Margaret was tough to love. Per Liz: "She was such a hard person and you don't relate to her, even at the end." Margy, on the other hand, loved that Margaret was an artist. "She would buy paintings. She'd find a Norman Rockwell, and note how he always found a perfect moment, and then put it under a microscope to find only the cute parts."

+ Jocey (who submitted this question ahead of time since she couldn't be with us) wondered if Margaret did the right thing in telling her son about his brother. Lois thinks yes. The author, most likely, thinks no. We leave that up to the reader to decide.

+ In the final pages of the book, Cal ponders the wisdom that comes from age, needling him because "it brought the clarity of hindsight without the means to change anything.." "This is why old people seem distant and distracted, he thought. We aren't living in the past. The past is living in us. And it's talking." This is what great writers do. They find the nugget of truth and present it to the reader in the perfect combination of words.

+ In many ways, this is an anti-war novel. The town is populated by people who've been traumatized by one war or another -- Cal's father by WWI and the rest of the town by WWII. People who've experienced war don't forget and are marked by it permanently. Chris pointed out that "I feel like we, too, have been invaded. Unless people experience that, they can't understand." This led us out of the book and into a closing conversation about Minneapolis under attack, where to find solid commentary, and how to keep calm and carry on.