I appreciated this book, even though it had themes I would not have read (abandonment, adultery, spiritualism, and the fall out of war) if I knew they were present.

Buckeye is a long, sweep of a book, taking place between two families in a small town in Ohio between WWII and Vietnam. It is a many-layered, well-written tale, and we feel the excruciating insecurities on all sides.

Here are some bits:

• “The things that we love tell us what we are.”
• “They disappeared into the task, shoveled themselves night and day into the furnace of their intention to keep Skip safe and healthy.”
• “Calling this new weapon ‘a harnessing of the basic power of the universe’ was, he knew, horseshit. It was a harnessing of the hubris of men.”
• “A weapon without shape that moved with the breeze and took down every living thing in its path wasn’t warfare. It was extermination.”
• “When he read, heard, and watched the news, he wondered how many people were out there doing the same thing he was—scratching their heads as they tried to figure out how to prioritize their worries and confront their prejudices; drawing their own maps with their fingers crossed.”
• “Wasn’t it a fair measure of a person, what they did with their mistakes?”
• ““What is it about time that confounds us? We spend it. We save it. We while it away. We waste it. We kill it. We complain about not having enough of it, or about having too much of it on our hands. We regret what we’ve done with it. We give it away. We want it back. We say “time and again” when something is bothering us and “it’s time” when something is supposed to end. Felix saw it so clearly: all we should ever want of time is more of it. Life was so simple when it was reduced to the barest of necessities: more time; more air; more Duke Ellington.”

If you don’t mind dealing with the themes I listed above, you might enjoy this one. Many others have included this on lists of the best of 2025. I, however, give it only 4 stars.