Maren Longbella, The Minnesota Star Tribune

I loved “Buckeye,” by Patrick Ryan. In fact, if I were talking to you about this book instead of writing about it, I would add a few more “loveds,” accompanied by gestures emphasizing how much.

Saying I loved it is the easy part, of course. Telling you why I loved it won’t be difficult, either. The hard part might be shutting up about it.

“Buckeye,” which is dedicated to novelist Ann Patchett and her husband Karl VanDevender, opens with Cal Jenkins. He is minding his father-in-law’s hardware store in Bonhomie, Ohio, a town that “wasn’t nearly so small that everyone knew everyone else, but it was small enough that, sooner or later, most everyone felt as if they’d laid eyes on most everyone else.” Then a woman, a stranger, walks in asking if h

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