Buckeye - Patrick Ryan - ★★★

AUTHOR: Patrick Ryan

GENRE: Historical Epic Saga

PUBLICATION DATE: September 2, 2025

RATING: 2.9 stars.

In a Nutshell: A character-driven epic historical family saga about four people whose lives become intricately connected. Decent character development, lyrical writing. Straightforward plot. Too much telling, too much secret-keeping. I think this fits under “The Great American Novel” category, which isn't a favourite genre of mine. This is an outlier opinion.

Plot Preview:

Bonhomie, Ohio. 1920s onwards till the 1980s.

Cal: Born with one leg shorter than the other; always self-conscious about not being serve during the war.

Becky: Cal’s wife; has a gift that enables her to communicate with spirits, but many consider her a sham.

Margaret: Trying her best to escape her painful past, but even a secure present isn't secure enough.

Felix: Has his reasons for marrying Margaret; serving with the navy during the war.

How are the two couples interconnected? What does fate have in store for them? We learn this and more through the third-person perspectives of all four characters in a story that spans decades.

Bookish Yays:

🙇🏻‍♀️ Becky as a character. Quite a strong female main character for a historical fiction, independent in mind and spirit.

🙇🏻‍♀️ The portrayal of Cal’s disability and how it, though significant, isn't the be-all and end-all of his personality.

🙇🏻‍♀️ The two couple’s relationships. Quite interesting to do a compare-and-contrast of their circumstances. Explores the role of trust, insecurity, secrets, and shared pain.

🙇🏻‍♀️ The small-town setting. Put to good use.

🙇🏻‍♀️ Many deep quotes worth jotting down.

Bookish Okays:

🤷🏻‍♀️ The character development of the four leads. They are realistic and flawed, which I appreciate. But they are also somewhat drab. I wish at least one of them had a spark of joviality to offer a break from the monotony of gloom.

🤷🏻‍♀️ The writing structure. Character-driven, with the story divided across chunky sections coming from the third-person POV of various characters. I usually love this format, but the length of each section means that it takes a bit of time to adjust to the new perspective.

🤷🏻‍♀️ The length and pacing. Decent for a character-driven epic saga, but also a test of the patience, especially in a story where not much is happening on page and yet too much is happening in the background. The book is highly introspective with a lot of moping and mulling, but at no point was it gripping my attention.

🤷🏻‍♀️ Becky’s psychic abilities and the societal reactions to seances, superstitious beliefs, willingness to try the unconventional – all great. But despite it playing a strong role in Becky’s arc, the writing focusses only on the worldly side of seances and not the otherworldly aspects. This was really disappointing given what was indicated about Becky’s abilities.

🤷🏻‍♀️ This book fits what is called ‘The Great American Novel’. Plenty of US history and pop culture references to help us remember that the book is about (mostly) ordinary US citizens during extraordinary times. All well except that it goes overboard on the patriotism. I can see why it would resonate strongly with US readers, but I felt like I was being taken through a calendar-based checklist of key US historical events.

🤷🏻‍♀️ For a generational saga, the book does well with the first gen but not much for the next gen. I would have liked more details on the children whose lives were dictated by their parents’ connection.

Bookish Nays:

🤦🏻‍♀️ The ease with which the characters forgave infidelity immediately disconnected me from them. I am not that angel-hearted and a casual brushing aside of infidelity never works for me.

🤦🏻‍♀️ A multitude of themes within the arcs, none out-of-the-expected except for the half-baked seances. The ingredients of this novel are standard features of most family sagas. I wish there were more originality to this work.

🤦🏻‍♀️ The first half was decent enough but the second half lost me entirely with its OTT drama and unrealistic communication and unnecessary secrets.

🤦🏻‍♀️ I could have forgiven the above had the book had a strong ending. But the finale is surprisingly lacklustre for a saga. It does feel realistic in some ways, but for a book nearing 500 pages, it needed more smoothness than a rushed, abrupt culmination.

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 15 hrs 44 min, is narrated by Michael Crouch. While he does a commendable job, this book, with multi-character perspectives, needed multiple narrators. Having one narrator for each POV would have helped break the tedium of hearing only one voice for almost 16 audio hours. Further, two POVs were female, so their emotions would have sounded more convincing coming from a female narrator.

Overall, I did expect to like this book better, given how much acclaim it has been getting. Then again, almost all the enthusiasm comes from US reviewers. I might have felt the same had there been an epic saga set during India’s formative years. But to me, this novel went overboard on US history and underperformed on personal emotions and originality.

Recommended to saga-loving readers looking for the “big American novel.”

2.9 stars. (3.75 for the first half, 2 stars for the second half. Averaged.)