Buckeye

“Roman looked a little disappointed and changed tracks. He asked if any of them had noticed the recent influx of refugees in town from central Europe, trickling in, he added.

Roman is characterized in part by his intolerance: He is a successful businessman who worries because the house he has purchased for Cal and Becky is “too close” to both a working-class neighborhood and one that is populated by African American and Mexican American families. Here, he expresses his discontent with a new wave of immigrants who, although white, are from what is to him a less desirable part of Europe. Roman’s prejudices reflect those of many others in town, and the narrative’s engagement with class is part of the novel’s broader examination of the sociocultural forces that shaped life in wartime America.

“You have to love him, and you have to let him love you back, but you don’t have to care about every dumb thing he says, and I can guarantee you, tomorrow he’s going to say something dumber.”

The nature of marriage and familial relationships is at the core of this novel’s thematic project, and this quotation comes from a conversation between Ida and Becky after she and Cal bicker over her interest in the spirit world. Ida’s approach to marriage is shaped by her long marriage to Roman, and it represents intergenerational knowledge transmission and the passage of values down from mother to daughter. The author presents marriage in a nuanced light, noting its drawbacks as well as its benefits as the novel explores The Impact of Secrets on Marriage and Family.

“Then in April, Roosevelt traveled to Warm Springs, Georgia, and sat for the painter Elizabeth Shoumatoff. During the sitting, on his 4,422^nd day as president, he complained of a headache and slumped forward, breaking his pose. He died that afternoon.”

History is an important backdrop in the world of this novel and its exploration of The Impact of War on Individual and Cultural Identity. Although character driven and often focused on the micro setting of the family, the narrative is deeply informed by the societal change wrought by the major events of the 20th century. Ryan grounds the narrative in historical specifics, exemplified by the identification of the exact day of Roosevelt’s presidency on which he died.

“Lydia gave Margaret different kind of books to read as she got older. Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She pulled Great Expectations off the shelf, and that took forever because they read it aloud to each other in little increments, but Margaret loved it. A dirty, stinkin’ kid whom no one wants who gets a benefactor and falls in love? What could be better than that?”

Margaret enjoys the arts; she is an avid reader and develops an interest in painting and visual art when she moves to Columbus. This characterization sets the stage for how stifling she finds Bonhomie: While Felix enjoys small-town life and is proud of his position at work, Margaret yearns for the sophistication of the city. She struggles against the expectation that she become a housewife, and her journey over the course of the novel intersects with the theme of Individualism Versus Conformity in Small Communities.

“Did she love him? How could she? She hadn’t been to bed with him, hadn’t been passionate with him. She liked him, very much. She liked everything about him she knew, right down to his smell. But love?”

Margaret is also characterized by her sexuality. Although her first experience with sex leaves her full of regret, Margaret explores her sexuality as she begins dating during the first few months of her life in the city. She is unfettered by the idea of social convention and does not feel ashamed of who she is. That her marital sex life is lackluster becomes a source of unhappiness for Margaret and is part of this novel’s engagement with the difficulties of marriage.

“In Columbus, she’d been a young bride for two and a half years. Here, she felt like, and was, a housewife.”

Like all the key characters, Margaret struggles with the tension between individuality and conformism. She does not want to be defined by the role of wife or mother, and the deep unhappiness at the core of her marriage to Felix is in part the result of the contrasts between their attitudes toward normativity. She is able to handle marriage in the city because she still has freedom and the opportunity to participate in the kind of culture that resonates with her, but life in Bonhomie is stifling, illustrated by her subdued tone as she labels herself a “housewife.” Margaret’s yearning for a life of her own and the dissatisfaction she feels as a wife and mother will remain key aspects of her characterization through her marriage to Felix and her choice to leave her family.

“She’d seen the news reels, but as hard as it was to imagine Felix talking and giving orders, it was even harder to imagine him watching hundreds of men die. She couldn’t even imagine watching him eat dehydrated food.”

The war becomes another source of disconnect for Felix and Margaret. Already mismatched in sexuality, their perceptions of what a “good” marriage looks like, and their life goals, Felix slips even further away from Margaret when he enlists. For Felix, the war looks very different from how it does for Margaret, and he does little to find common ground or even write letters that attempt to maintain a connection. Already lonely in her marriage, Margaret feels even lonelier after Felix leaves.

“I don’t want children.”

Many of the characters in this novel wrestle with the way their individualism comes into conflict with the kind of conformity that society asks of them. Here, Margaret admits to Cal that she does not want children, revealing how at odds she is with all the women she knows. However, the firm certainty of her diction highlights her characteristic self-awareness; she knows she is different and accepts it.

“All through that first afternoon, now that they were off ship, Felix wondered if the tension he felt for weeks between him and Augie was only in his head.”

Felix struggles with the impact of societal expectations and conformity on his life and identity. As a closeted gay man, he cannot act on his romantic impulses, and being unable to address his attraction to Augie openly causes him anxiety, to the point where, as in this thought, he wonders if their connection is “only in his head.” That he ultimately loses Augie becomes one of the greatest sources of sadness that he will have to process, and the grief that he feels over this loss will reshape his entire life, ending his marriage and altering his career trajectory.

“Cal and Margaret had other things to think about. They both knew they were never going to be together again, not this way.”

During this passage, Cal and Margaret part ways but set into motion a chain of events that will reverberate through their lives and the lives of their families. Secrecy is one of the novel’s most important thematic focal points, and the secret that Cal and Margaret share will impact their marriages, their children, and their decisions moving forward. The author explores the different ways that secrets affect families through his portrayals of the Salt and Jenkins families: The Salts will divorce, and the Jenkinses separate but ultimately reunite, helping the author paint a nuanced portrait of love and marriage.

“The best parts of Felix had been knocked out of him in the blast and leached into the salt water.”

Many of this novel’s characters are impacted by war, and Felix, like Everett, returns home with emotional wounds that are tough to heal. Felix nearly dies and loses the love of his life from the explosion, and the violence enacted upon Felix is illustrated through his comment that the “best parts” were “knocked” out of him. Felix’s struggles are part of the novel's broader engagement with the debilitating impact of war and the scarcity of resources allocated to veterans to help them process their experience and re-enter society.

“On Taft Street, Becky was as relieved as anyone that the war was over, but troubled. Her heart swelled, thinking of all the people who’d be returning to their families, and it deflated when she’d thought of all the people who died fighting, and all of the grief that would flow out of those deaths for decades.”

Many of the key characters in this novel wrestle with the impact of war, which is depicted from multiple perspectives. Although Becky’s husband remained in Bonhomie during the war, she understands that the loss on the scale experienced during WWII has the power to reshape society. Her reflection on how the grief would continue for “decades” highlights the novel’s argument about how change resonates through generations, both individually and collectively.

“That’s what parenting was, endless responsibility.”

All the novel’s main characters find themselves at odds with societal expectations in some key way. Margaret, unlike all the other women she knows, does not enjoy motherhood. She does not feel a strong emotional bond with Tom, and they share a fiery temperament that makes their relationship difficult, even when he is a small child. To her, parenthood boils down to one thing—“endless responsibility”—and her frustration and unwillingness are conveyed by this succinct summation.

“You think you see them. Say, when you’re out somewhere, you think it’s them, and then, you remember. But for a second, you were sure.”

Felix is “haunted” by Augie’s memory and thinks that he sees him all over town. These sightings illustrate both the depth of Felix’s war trauma and the depth of his grief. As a closeted gay man, he is sure that he will never again have the opportunity to find true love. What he mourns in the months and years following the war is not just Augie’s death but also hope that he will ever have a meaningful connection again.

“The more Everett witnessed this family, his family, he was coming to realize, the more he saw a disparity between them and him. Or between them and the person he’d recently been. His memory of his pre-fire behavior was spotty. On the couch one afternoon, watching Skip watch television, he said, ‘Did I ever call you a bad name?’

Skip thought about it: ‘Shitbird.’

‘I’m sorry.’”

Through the examples of its characters, the novel argues that people are capable of growth and change. Many of the characters who make errors are able to correct them over the course of the novel, and even fraught figures like Everett are shown to be “works in progress.” Everett demonstrates his ability to grow when he observes his son’s family, but his direct confrontation with his past behavior and his willingness to apologize also highlight the difficult work necessary for change.

“I miss your voice, your face, every part of you. I wish we’d found a way to be together, not just on the island. I wish we’d met sooner. I wish we’d had more time.”

This message that Felix writes to Augie is important for several reasons. It is the first time that he expresses and acknowledges his feelings, and it is also the first time that he reveals his sexuality to another person—in this case, Becky. Both of those moments of truth allow Felix to gain some closure for his loss and become important steps on his healing journey.

“She’d done her best to love him as he was, she really had, but her son kept changing on her. He’d gone from being the mistake she had to carry around, to the mystery she’d had to keep alive, to the beautiful boy with Cal lurking inside him, waiting to jump out. His hair and eye color meant the fuse on the bomb was long and probably slow-burning, but it sparked none the less.”

Margaret never wanted children, and she cannot quite be the parent that her son needs. Her discomfort is rooted not only in the stress of dealing with his actual temperament (which is much like hers) but also in the added strain of his potential to reveal her secret. The volatility of the situation is emphasized through her metaphor comparing the truth of his parentage to a bomb.

“If there was one thing Margaret was good at, it was prioritizing herself.”

Felix makes this statement after Margaret leaves. The sentiment is rooted in his anger and shock over her actions, but it isn’t quite an accurate description of his wife. That he would interpret Margaret’s unhappiness and her courage in addressing it as selfishness, without acknowledging the part that he played in the deceptions of their marriage, speaks to the disconnect that was at the core of their relationship.

“She kept her overhead low and her life deliberately simple.”

Felix and the people in Bonhomie characterize Margaret as selfish after she leaves her family, but Margaret ultimately wants little more than her freedom. She misses her child and feels guilty for abandoning him, but she prefers solitude to family life. She is a character defined in large part by the gap between her beliefs and values and those espoused by society. She does not want to be a wife and a mother, but it is only after becoming both that she truly realizes that.

“You’re not your leg!”

In middle age, Cal still defines himself primarily by his disability, causing Becky to finally address the issue directly. Early in their marriage, he wonders if Becky had been the right choice for him, and that kind of dissatisfaction manifests in multiple ways as the years pass and he wonders how his life might have been different. In a novel concerned with identity, individualism, and conformity, Cal’s character arc is partly concerned with developing a sense of identity beyond this reductive scope.

“For Becky and Cal, every shock, every minor gasp, every horrible news item in that first year of their grief felt viciously attached to the loss of their son.”

Becky and Cal experience a tragic loss when Skip dies, but that loss is part of what brings them back together. Their shared reaction reveals both their connection through grief and the sensitivity to tragedy that accompanies it. The author’s broader point in his depiction of Cal and Becky is that even couples who have serious problems or go through traumatic times can hope for reconciliation and reconnection.

“That’s the thing. He’s still mad in about ten different directions. But he’s also sad, because there isn’t anyone left in his family, even in his unexpectedly extended one, who hasn’t lied to him.”

The revelation of Cal and Margaret’s secret is one of Tom’s defining moments. He responds with conflicting emotions that will take him years to sort out. The novel explores family in a complex, nuanced way, showing how one situation (like the secret of Tom’s parentage) can impact different people and different families in divergent ways.

“Tom couldn’t imagine a struggle like what Felix had gone through, losing Augie and almost dying at the same time. Hiding who he was for decades.”

Tom is ultimately an empathetic character, and once he gets past his anger at his parents, he is able to forgive his father because he can imagine how difficult Felix’s life has been. This insight allows him to look beyond the way that Felix treated him and understand the roots of his father’s behavior. Their reconciliation is one of the key moments of reconnection in the novel and its thematic exploration of the impact of secrets on marriage and family.