Bonhomie is the fictional town in northeastern Ohio, where Ryan’s four characters find themselves living for the years of their married lives. Four individuals, two couples, growing up during World War II, married and raising a son each during the fifties and sixties, facing personal crises, long buried secrets, and the consequences of bad choices. There is much in this novel to praise: fine writing, superb attention to detail, excellent action scenes, genuine self reflection scenes of individual characters. Ryan is a great writer, and handles the sweeping history, as well as the individual caught up in that history, with marvelous skill. I have issues with some of his perspectives, but as long as the reader is aware of these, there is much to laud about this book.

Cal Jenkins is born and raised in Bonhomie, has a congenital defect of one leg being shorter than the other. While this keeps him from serving in WWII, the relentless teasing and bullying, coupled with the inability to serve, leave him very insecure. His mother and siblings all die when he is young, leaving him with a odd, alcoholic father, who is suffering from his traumatic experience in World War I. Cal moves out at eighteen, living in an apartment and working at a cement facility. When he meets Becky Hanover at a diner counter, it is life-changing. Becky has a gift for hearing the communications of the deceased, and wants to use this gift to help others, for no money, feeling it is her calling in life. In spite of her quirkiness, her parents treasure her, so she is confident and smart. She sees the good in Cal, and feels she can build him up to be the man he is capable of becoming. Her father makes him manager of the town hardware store, and Cal eventually finds his true talent in making it a very successful business.

Margaret Anderson was an orphan, left as a baby at the Open Arms Orphanage. After a series of terrible foster placements throughout her younger years, the manager, Lydia, finally decides to keep Margaret at the orphanage, to help care for the little ones, as there are endless chores when caring for so many girls. When Margaret reaches eighteen, she goes to Columbus, the big city, to find her way. It is obvious that being given up by her mother as a baby is a lifelong traumatic wound for Margaret, and she tries in various ways to build her image, to cover up her damaged past, and makes bad choices. It is hard to give what you never received, to build a solid structure on sand. When she meets Felix Salt on a double date, she sees that this may be the way to a happy life. Felix is described as a handsome man, physically gifted, a match for Margaret, who is a red-haired, green-eyed beauty. With his engineering degree, he is a budding success at Tuck & Sons, and shortly after he and Margaret marry, he is offered an executive-level position at the plant in Bonhomie. Felix has a secret at his core that he has worked his entire life to deny and hide, feeling that this marriage to Margaret will make his issue go away.

While socially naive, Becky is the only character who has a firm emotional foundation in life, although she has much to learn about what motivates people. With her practice of contacting people’s deceased loved ones, she gradually learns much about life, the main lesson, really of the entire book, is that we are here to give and receive love and forgiveness— nothing else matters, all else falls away as unimportant. This theme is the best aspect of Ryan’s book. The downside? Ryan is unflinching in showing the harms of war, how it damages men, and their families. He shows the generational impacts on these families, from WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. This is woven throughout these families, and how the government fails to help veterans cope with the trauma of their war experiences. What is missing is the proud, patriotic aspects of military service, the fact that men (and later, women) are willing, in each generation, to protect our freedoms and serve. This is a wonderful thing, but is not seen from that perspective, only depicted as a terrible tragedy.

We see the incremental changes in society with respect to the treatment of black people and gay people in Bonhomie. Homosexuals went from living lives in hiding or in denial, trying to adopt status quo lives in hopes of converting their desires, and living with deep shame when they could not. The story closes in the seventies, so we are on the cusp of considerable societal change. While not the main focus of the novel, we see certain older characters treating blacks with distain, even those who have served their country in war. Ryan gets all of this exactly right, and he has incredible sensitivity toward those characters living lives in hiding, carrying great emotional burdens. Our government and society at large took a long time to grant freedoms to all people, to help those who have difficult starts in life, to help those who deserve our help after giving everything to preserve our freedoms. We still fall short in many ways—I’m especially thinking of our foster-care system, and traumatized, homeless veterans. Change is slow, gradual—but we are moving in the right direction.

Ryan’s novel has a heavy, serious, sad tone in general. The only uplift is Becky, who helps everyone to realize that love and forgiveness are our mission in life, and the more we can bring, the better we all will be. She sets the example that lifts everyone to be their best selves. This book will be excellent for book discussion groups, as there is much for deep pondering.