Buckeye: A Read with Jenna Pick

<b>“Wise and heartbreaking” (Ann Napolitano), this captivating epic weaves the intimate lives of two Midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century.</b><br><br>In the small Ohio town of Bonhomie, 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 whom they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship; she will soon learn that he may have perished in a predawn attack in the Philippine Sea. <br><br>As the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie, but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Twenty-five years later, as another war convulses America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter set in motion a series of events that will upend the next generation of both families as they head toward a new century.<br><br>Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, <i>Buckeye</i> captures the universal longing for love, and for goodness.