I was particularly fascinated by the book's structure. It uses an intricate web of overlapping timelines, first grounding us in Cal’s story before expertly layering on Margaret’s perspective, all while their respective spouses, Becky and Felix, intertwine. The resulting relationships are remarkably intricate, spanning parental bonds, deep friendships, and spiritual connections. The marriages, in particular, feel like accurate, messy snapshots of the era.
My only real critique lies in the pacing. Because the vast majority of the novel focuses intensely on just a two-year window, the sudden rush to squeeze in the later years felt jarring. Those final decades deserved the same rich, in-depth exploration that made the first half of the book so captivating.
From the publisher:
In Bonhomie, Ohio, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: She is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship, out of harm’s way—until a telegram suggests that the unthinkable might have happened.
Later, as the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie—but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to reexamine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.
Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love and for goodness.
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