Ohio

By: Stephen Markley

Narrated by: Caitlin Davies, Jayme Mattler, Joy Osmanski, Jonathan Todd Ross, Corey Brill, Gibson Frazier

“Extraordinary...beautifully precise...[an] earnestly ambitious debut.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A wild, angry, and devastating masterpiece of a book.” —NPR

“[A] descendent of the Dickensian ‘social novel’ by way of Jonathan Franzen: epic fiction that lays bare contemporary culture clashes, showing us who we are and how we got here.” —Oprah Daily

“A book that has stayed with me ever since I put it down.” —Seth Meyers, host of Late Night with Seth Meyers

One sweltering night in 2013, four former high school classmates converge on their hometown in northeastern Ohio.

There’s Bill Ashcraft, a passionate, drug-abusing young activist whose flailing ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park to post-BP New Orleans, and now back home with a mysterious package strapped to the undercarriage of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting her family and the mother of her best friend and first love, whose disappearance spurs the mystery at the heart of the novel; Dan Eaton, a shy veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a dinner date with the high school sweetheart he’s tried desperately to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the washed-up captain of the football team triggers the novel’s shocking climax.

Set over the course of a single evening, Ohio toggles between the perspectives of these unforgettable characters as they unearth dark secrets, revisit old regrets and uncover—and compound—bitter betrayals. Before the evening is through, these narratives converge masterfully to reveal a mystery so dark and shocking it will take your breath away.

good story

The author deftly integrates the lives of several small town characters. Tragic and believable. The plot is at times difficult to follow but it all comes together at climax and worth the wait.

Conflicted and bored

I think I just wasn’t interested enough in adults not maturing from their adolescence . They kept revisiting it ; longing for it ; incapable of learning from their pasts . I don’t have much patience for people like that , so maybe I’m flawed , not the work . There were boys and men behaving very badly , a la the Gillette commercial , “ boys will be boys “. For me , as a man , there is no excuse for that type of behavior , much less it being portrayed as a right of passage and having the female victims seemingly fall prey to the b s excuses themselves instead of making clear the crimes and their deleterious effects the story opts for the commission of another crime as vengeance. I simply could not identify with any of the rather banal, pathetic characters .

Wow. A novel of the times.

Gritty but just shy of gratuitous, this was a very engrossing book that kept me listening close to straight through. There was something sincere, intelligent, and real about it. Definitely worth the time.

Great read!

Both crying sad and laugh out loud funny-
Author just nails all the tones of voices. It’s cool to see how the early 2000s played out for high school kids and how they grow into adults. Full of pathos.
Richly rewarding. I’ll read again a couple of 3 audiobooks from now, as there are lots of details I’m sure I missed the first time.

Like a car crash you can’t look away from

This book is so well written, and so human, and everything good and evil that implies. Of the many characters, you can’t help but love a few, LOATH a few, and feel some mix of both for many.

So many heart warming moments punctuated with heart pounding horrors, that you just can’t let it go long after you’ve finished the last paragraph.

This is one of those books where you just get an immediate sense that you’ve come upon something important.