New York Times bestseller • Amazon’s Best Book of 2025 • Read With Jenna pick • New York Times Notable Book of the Year • Washington Post Notable Book of the Year • one of People Magazine’s 15 Best Books of 2025 • Barnes & Noble National Book Club selection • Barnes & Noble Finalist for Book of the Year • New York Times Editor’s Choice book • Book-of-the-Month Club selection • one of Apple’s Best Books of 2025 • American Booksellers Association / Indie bestseller • Indie Next List pick • Backstory’s Novel of the Year • Longlisted for the 2026 Joyce Carol Oates Award

“Omniscient, sweeping, almost defiantly sentimental, Buckeye is a reminder of the deep pleasure of following a cast of characters over their entire lives, through births, deaths, marriages, tragedies and, in this case, hard-won reconciliations…. Ryan’s wide-angle approach complements his evocative yet tranquil style. He rolls out braided stories with uncommon patience while creating instantly vivid characters… The author clearly loves these people, and he makes the safe bet that you will, too.” — Jess Walter, The New York Times Book Review

“[Buckeye is] a once-in-a-decade novel. You read it once and then, even though it’s 500 pages, want to reread again. I underlined so many parts of this book to share as inspiration. I fell in love with these characters… I would recommend this book to anybody.” —Jenna Bush Hager, TODAY Show

“Ryan […] ambitiously aims here to write an American epic and he has the chops to do so. Ryan’s omniscient narrator takes turns experiencing events from the four main characters’ points of view, always subtly underscoring how contingency shapes our lives.” — Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“Ryan’s heartfelt historical novel […] conjures moral complexities behind the facade of carefully crafted mid-century lives.” —The Washington Post

“Refreshingly timeless…With shades of Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety and Daniel Mason’s North Woods, Buckeye is the rare novel that manages to be sweeping and intimate at the same time.” —The New York Times (“Book of the Week”)

“This mesmerizing, tender novel follows two Ohio families from the 1920s through the ’60s as they find and lose love and loved ones through what one character aptly calls ‘the unraveling of time.’” — People (“Must-Read Books of Fall”)

“[A] luminous and tender 20th-century saga of wounded souls and small-town secrets.” — The Guardian

“Ambitious and engrossing […] Buckeye is a family saga, a ghost story, an affair novel and a social history rolled into one. Above all, it is an investigation into how ordinary lives absorb the shocks of a violent century.” — The Irish Times

“The combination of unconventional sex lives, sardonic wit and 20th-century American history recalls the early novels of John Irving, although [Patrick] Ryan is a little softer than Irving, his outlook a little more romantic. Ultimately, the triumph of his book is the way it captures the nature of mistakes, both the holes dug and the bridges built. It’s not just a great Midwestern novel, it’s a great novel, period.” — Financial Times

“The quality of his writing is what really sustains the momentum. This is sweeping-family-saga stuff, but the writing is crisp and witty, with a nicely-judged balance of intimacy and distance.” — The Irish Independent

“Well-crafted and poignant… Buckeye draws the reader into its time and place and simply beguiles. This chronicle of leaving and loss, loving and forgiving, burns slowly and hopefully until the end.” — BookPage

 “An old-fashioned novel in the best sense: it’s expansive, generously paced, and full of sympathetic, well-rounded characters experiencing the joys and sorrows of everyday life.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“In this heartfelt novel … [t]he author’s vision of small-town life is as timeless as Sherwood Anderson’s or Thornton Wilder’s, and is enriched by his complex and morally conflicted characters. Filled with wit and emotion on every page, this is a stirring paean to the joys and sorrows of family.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“This quietly affecting and nuanced story . . . deftly blends in surprising twists and insights as it follows seemingly ordinary people living seemingly typical lives, resulting in a tale that comes across as absolutely authentic and deeply satisfying.” — Booklist (starred review)

Available for purchase here.

Buckeye is published by Random House in the U.S. and by Bloomsbury in the U.K. It currently has fourteen international publishers.

Hear Mary Louise Kelly interview Patrick for NPR’s All Things Considered

Hear Brenda Allison interview Patrick for the Barnes & Noble podcast Poured Over

Hear Marrie Stone interview Patrick for Writers on Writing

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