As a native Ohioan I recognized people I grew up with, I went to school with, and worked with. That said, it doesn't necessarily represent all that Ohio is and has become. But, it was a mesmerizing tale that could've been set in my small hometown.

Ohio by Stephen Markley is a 2018 Simon & Schuster publication.

New Canaan, Ohio

The Rust Belt-

By now the plight of those living in a what is commonly known as ‘The Rust Belt", is etched into our consciousness. A marginalized area simmering in hostility, hammered by a stubborn economic depression, and an unprecedented epidemic opiate crisis.

This atmosphere is more in the forefront than in the background as Stephen Markley captures the mentality of those born and raised in this environment. Four high school friends, all of whom took a different path in life, all of them haunted by actions, decisions, and memories of the past, compounded by their current day realities, return home at the same time, with shocking results.

The novel begins in 2007 with the funeral of former football star Rick Brinklan, killed in Iraq. This surreal parade sets the stage quite effectively as the author leads the reader quickly to 9/11- the event that cements a ‘before and after’ time frame for our main characters.

Separated into four segments, giving each character the power of the first person narrative to describe their youthful experiences, the angst of needing to belong, the compulsion to express individuality, or their forced conformity.

All four voices are connected by their upbringing, their history, and their knowledge of certain crimes, their mistakes and regrets.

Their shared memories, especially centered around rumors of and evidence of certain events that took place in high school, still binds them. But, the unspoken jealousies and competitions build to a point that eventually boils over, the consequences that follow them into adulthood, and will eventually bring terrible tragedy, which now begs for justice.

This is a very impressive debut novel. It is thought provoking, with very strong characterizations, and vivid depictions of time and place. It is, however, very laborious, and verbose, perhaps in need of a more aggressive editor. Despite some clunky sections, the author’s prose is magnificent.

In my opinion the mystery is not the most prominent element of this book even though it is firmly placed in that category. In fact, I wondered at times, if the author intended to write a true mystery or was using it as a means to an end, with a fictionalized social commentary being the ultimate goal.


Yet, at the end of the day, there is a mystery, one that took me by surprise, the outcome of which never really crossed my mind, as my attention was diverted by the rich characterizations. The story eventually merges the four individual segments with a surprising turn of events.

Some of the vignettes, if you will, reminded me of many typical small town scenarios, not just those who have come under such intense scrutiny as of late. I live in a small town in Texas, surrounded by even smaller towns, some which have dried up the same way those in the heavily maligned rust belt. Factories closed, drugs took over, bored teens did what bored teens do, creating cliques and fiefdoms, and in a football obsessed mindset- similar crimes are committed, overlooked and unreported. Some are trapped in a vicious, never ending cycle going back generations with no end in sight, and others got away only to find themselves right back where they started, or curiously enough, unable to find contentment in any other way of life.

Stiff conservative values, hard wired patriotism, and God and country still rule in the hearts and minds of small town America- and God help you if you go against the grain with sexual identity or liberal leanings. My point being that the rust belt in not unique in this. My next point is – don’t stereotype- of presume this is a searing portrait of the entire state of Ohio- despite the book’s title.

The story takes a very long and rambling way around to linking the threads together, perhaps too long if the goal was to keep the reader invested in the mystery elements.

But, if you want to get a very realistic look at the issues that still very much divide our country, dissect the long road leading to this point; if you want to see why there is such a fierce loyalty to this way of life, or if you just enjoy strong, well- drawn characters, placed in a dense and gritty atmosphere- and don’t mind depending on those characters to carry you through to the ultimate moment of truth- then the mystery, which doesn’t come on strong until the bitter end, will be worth the extended wait.

The book is a riveting combination of narratives, quite absorbing, albeit violent and pretty darned bleak and melancholy.
So, my only caution to readers is to keep in mind that small towns everywhere suffer some of these same plights, these exact same attitudes, and personalities, but that is not a rebuke of all the residents, or the state in which they are located and hope the urge to group everyone together in the blame game will be avoided.

Wisely, the author added diversity to the story, which hopefully will help to combat strict preconceived notions about rural or blue- collar areas. However, it would serve us all well, from small communities to large cities, from the east to the west, and all points in between, to step outside our own insular world to consider the challenges and fears of others. Compassion may begin at home, but it doesn’t have to stop there - it is limitless.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this book, I really enjoyed it. Being from and living in Ohio myself I could really understand the places being talked about.
The rust belt community and the issues at hand I also understood.
A very well written book, all the friends, their issues, their reuniting and what they came back for kept me intrigued to keep reading.
I won’t give too much away, but I highly recommend this book and have also to my fellow reading friends .

Ohio had a slow start for me. It took me a bit to figure out what was going on, and where was Stephen Markley taking me with the story. Once I got the hang of it and realizing the story would unfold as I got to meet each of the characters, I relaxed and began enjoying the story. I found this book terribly sad in its crude reality. The story takes place in a small town in Ohio called New Canaan. The kind of town where everyone knows each other and the most exciting part of growing up there is High School football. As hard as it may be for some folks to believe people would cling to their HS glories and mistakes 10 years later in life, it's not far-fetched or unrealistic. I was a SoCal transfer in a small town in Iowa for a year, and my experience with the people there was not too different from some of the experiences described in <b>Ohio</b>.

I found this book to be thought-provoking, introspective, poignant, and terribly disturbing. Not an action-packed book where the pages fly in front of you. This is a book to read and process. To consider and evaluate your reactions and emotions toward the perspectives and opinions of each of the characters presented. It's not a book for everyone, especially in this polarized era of our country. The split reactions to the book are merely a reflection of the subjects discussed, and the times we live in.

I was provided with an ARC from NetGalley and Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately, life had it where I was unable to finish the book before its publication date. It's hard to read when everything else is spinning out of control around you. Nevertheless, here's my review.

This was an ambitious effort considering it was the author's debut novel. There were so many characters and details to keep track of, but most of it came together by the end. The disturbing elements were a bit much for me, so I found myself setting it aside several times to read something less dark. Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is a powerful, emotional, graphic, and issue filled read! I was hooked from the beginning. The characters are very flawed and sometimes not very likable. In spite of that, I couldn't help wanting to know what happens to each of them. From their high school experiences, loves, and secrets, to a random night a decade later when everything seems to lead to a perfect storm, these young people's stories illustrate the issues facing many families today. As a warning, there is an incredibly graphic retribution by a woman who could powerfully represent the #MeToo movement.
This is not an easy or always fun book to read, but it will make you think and challenge your ability to be unmoved by the lives of these characters. The author does a great job of revealing the needed history and details as they are needed rather than giving them in order. He also connects each character to the story by showing the events from multiple points of view. I really appreciated these literary angles, and it enhanced my enjoyment of the book.
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this title.

This is a complicated book to review not because it was a complicated read because the words flowed effortlessly. It is the emotion that the book evokes as a group of high school friends meet back in their hometown of Canaan Ohio. I could picture perfectly this small forgotten town defined by poverty and unemployment. The intermingled stories are told as friends look back on their teenage past and how it has shaped their future more than they could have ever known. As a mother my heart broke as they experience every danger a parent fears as their teen grows up. Tough topics such as violence, sexual abuse, drug addition and overdose play a central role in the story. Marley's writing and ability to tell multi layered story with complicated real characters is genius.

This is a really stunning novel, full of reminiscences that appear as clear as though they were happening presently, in stark contrast to the drug addled reality.
I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to understand the complex circumstance of looking back with regret on ones emergent adulthood.

I don’t even know if I have started processing all that this book told. It was raw, tragic, gripping, depressing, and downright dark at some parts. It took a while to get through because I had to walk away and take a few days, at times a week, just to bring myself back around.

The small town of New Canaan, Ohio was rocked by 9/11, the opioid crisis, and the financial crash. Lifelong friendships are tested because of differing political views. Drugs run rampant as does the story of the murder that never was. There are so many secrets in this town it was sometimes hard to keep up. I was captivated by the story and heartbroken for the characters. A raw read, but a very good one.

What a beautiful, dark story. Really seems to nail some of the small-town characters ... very realistic. I think this is because a lot of the dialogue rings true. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading, regardless of genre.

I have been pushing myself through this book, determined to finish it because I always finish books, but I just can't. This may be the book for someone else, but it is not the book for me. I am at least a quarter of the way through, and I still have no idea what it is about, or why. So far I have met two characters, both huge losers, who have a drug-fueled conversation about nothing. The scenery is beyond depressing, and so is the story. I just can't.

Published by Simon & Schuster on August 21, 2018

In 2007, high school football star Rick Brinklan gets a parade with a casket borrowed from Wal-Mart because the Marines need to keep his body while investigating his death. The town of New Canaan celebrates with a cake decorated with an America flag and speeches by the members of his football team and ex-girlfriends (except those who are too high or ashamed to speak). Six years later, four vehicles converge on New Canaan and Stephen Markley launches four intersecting stories.

Bill Ashcraft has driven drunk and high from New Orleans to Ohio, where he plans to deliver a package. He doesn’t know what’s in the package but he’s sure it isn’t legal. His return to New Canaan and chance encounters in taverns (not to mention even more drug and alcohol consumption) trigger high school memories of betrayals and broken friendships, one involving one of Rick’s girlfriends, who has a woeful story of her own to tell. Ashcraft’s more recent memories include the loss of his best friend from New Canaan, a singer-songwriter who died in LA while Ashcraft was attending the Occupy protest in New York.

Stacey Moore is traveling to New Canaan to deliver a letter. Stacey discovered her sexual identity in New Canaan, skating on the periphery of Brinklan’s crowd despite her relationships with Ashcraft’s girlfriend and with the songwriter. Stacey’s time in New Canaan, like Ashcraft’s, is punctuated by memories (mostly of her adventurous sex life), but she also has a conversation that gives the reader a clue about the contents of Ashcraft’s package.

Dan Eaton, home from the war but missing an eye and part of his soul, returns to New Canaan to see Hailey Kowalczyk, the object of his childhood crush and enduring love, who is now married to a kid he knew in school. Dan signed up for his last tour because as bad as Iraq or Afghanistan might be, they feel more like home to him than Ohio. Before Dan can find Hailey, he is waylaid by Ashcraft, encounters several high school friends at New Canaan bars, responds to violence as only a man with one eye can, and remembers disturbing incidents from his tours of duty.

Tina Ross didn’t move far from New Canaan. She makes a quick trip to New Canaan to find her high school love, a football player who used her, abused her, and left her damaged. Her story is, in many ways, the most gruesome part of the novel; it is not suitable for squeamish readers.

In the final chapter, we finally learn what was in the package Ashcraft brought to New Canaan and see the consequences of its delivery. The story then jumps ahead four years to resolve a couple of mysteries and tie characters together in new ways.

The destructive power of the secrets we carry is one of the novel’s themes. Another is the nature of dreams of the future, the random ways that life interferes with the opportunity to achieve them, and the need to fight for your dreams even if you know the battle cannot be won. Another is change: the way people change, the way people are changing the Earth, and the fear that the world might be changing in dark ways to which many residents of towns like New Canaan are deliberately oblivious.

Characters engage in political debate, but the disagreements are expressed in intelligent language; neither side of the divide is presented as buffoonery. At the same time, the debates expose the narrow-minded hypocrisy of bumper sticker patriots who base their opinions on the assumed superiority of white heterosexual American-born males (although readers who share that viewpoint might think the bigots get the better of the arguments).

Characters are the strength of Ohio. Many of the primary and collateral characters are decent people who make an effort to help broken people. The broken characters are inspirational in their own way as they “rage against the faceless entropy” and “endure the Truth and struggle to extinction.” As much as the novel rages against small town narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy, it also recognizes that small towns are filled with people who reject bigotry and embrace the values of compassion and understanding. Those people are often taken for granted, but they are the people who give small towns whatever heart and soul they might have.

The first three stories are exceptional. Tina’s story is powerful but a bit forced, while the key event of the final chapter is too far removed from the story that precedes it to be convincing. While the four stories intersect, they never quite add up to something greater than their parts. Apart from the key event in the last chapter to which I alluded, the ways in which the stories tie together in the final chapter are clever, but the resolution doesn’t do justice to the deeper stories that precede it.

Still, some of the novel’s passages are breath-stopping in their perceptive examination of troubled characters who are struggling to find a way to make sense of life. While the stories don’t quite cohere to make an entirely successful novel, viewed a series of long, connected stories that provide an in-depth examination of haunted characters in a small Ohio town (perhaps the modern version of Winesburg), Ohio approaches the status of masterpiece.

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In this gritty and raw narrative, "Ohio" examines the lives of four former high school peers whose lives converge when they return to their hometown. Each of their experiences and individual reflections on the past are portrayed in distinct chapters, however keeping track of the characters and relationships through the flashbacks was challenging. They graduated from high school just after 9-11 and the subsequent political climate and economic recession has impacted their lives and community due to war, drugs and financial hardship. I struggled at times with the content which was at times quite graphic and dark. Throughout the novel a violent act from high school is depicted its consequences to the group are revealed. Markley is certainly a talented writer and tackles modern day struggles in a distinctive, yet disturbing portrayal.

Stephen Markley's Ohio is a dark read full of lost souls returning to a small midwestern town that's been passed by. His characters are so well written that I could smell some of them right through the page. Opioids, dealing, using, overdoes, abuse and the grime of a druggie's life are all there in this powerful character-driven novel. Not for everyone, but the writing is first-rate and it does pull you in.

Stephen Markley writes an excellent and poignant novel involving characters that you feel a real connection to, and you find yourself caring for them. The realistic depictions of returning "home" and feeling the changes is sure to resonate with a lot of readers, myself included. Dealing with realistic and current events, I found this book hard to put down!

I truly wanted to love this book and was eager to read it when I first saw it available, however, I just couldn't get into it and find the wonderful qualities that other readers did. Typically, when books have mixed reviews such as this one, I find myself on the positive side, but Ohio was tedious and stressful to get through, and also took me several days to read when I typically read a novel in one sitting.

Yes it was dark and there are several troubling and unsettling events and descriptions, but the flashbacks were often confusing and the political tones also became very tedious. I'm not sure where my feelings about Millennials fall on the spectrum, but these characters were not a positive representation in any way.

*Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This novel is set in a small town in northeastern Ohio, where four friends return home in 2013 and find there are ongoing ripples and consequences from their schooldays. The author gets small town midwestern culture right and writes deeply about the individual characters. This could practically be a quartet of character study novels.

Stephen Markely's book Ohio offers a bird's eye view of post 9-11 life in a small Ohio town as evidenced by four former high school classmates. In the midst of an opioid epidemic, failed romances, widespread poverty, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and too many nostalgic ties to their high school years, these well developed characters reveal their past heartbreaks and evil intentions in an attempt to salvage their future.

Like many young men of the times, some found patriotism as their balm and others found drugs. Fewer others managed to find a place in academia, and still others found a parasitic existence served them best. Any hope for the future can be found by reading between the lines.

This book is a rich examination of the lives of four high school friends whose lives converge one night in their adulthood. Each of the four sections is devoted to the history and present of one character as they interact with the other characters. The sections weave together seamlessly as we see events through different perspectives. The result is gritty and raw, yet the writing is poetic. I loved the part that the setting, a small town in Ohio hit hard by the recession, played in the book. It was a character in and of itself. The characters are so real with their beauty and their flaws that their individual tragedies are all the more tragic. Thank you netgalley for an ARC of this novel. I highly recommend it. #Ohio #netgalley

4 Stars.

Four former friends converge on the town they grew up in: New Canaan, Ohio. Bound together for better or worse, each have their own reasons for returning and each person’s story intertwines in a way that is dark, evocative and simply jaw-dropping.

This town is desolate, depressed and ravaged by war. They have nothing to give, except for their opinions and those are in abundance. Alcohol and drugs run rampant with addiction on the rise. People drive cars that are 20 years old, dealerships and factories are shut down and the only place to shop is Walmart. It’s Rock and Rock, it’s anarchy, it’s life.

Back in High School, there was nothing to do besides taking lots of drugs, talking sh*t, getting laid and getting into trouble. These former friends did their fare share.

Bill Ashcraft is high when he rolls into to The Cane, and I don’t mean high on life. He is a man on a mission and he is counting down the seconds.

Stacey Moore arrives in town hoping to find an old friend. She gets more than she bargained for.

Dan Eaton’s short life haunts him. If only forgetting his past was an option.

Tina Ross comes to New Canaan with something on her mind. Her High School experience was unlike the others.

When these four collide, there are fireworks.

For most of us, High School still feels like yesterday. The friendships, the rivalries, the memories. This is true for Bill, Stacey, Dan and Tina, as well as for a few others, whose lives are intrinsically entwined with theirs.

“Ohio” by Stephen Markley is a novel like no other, yet it reads like real life: some cussing, some church going, some laughter, some tears - all the while the storylines whirling, like air through a wind turbine, converting wind to energy. This is a novel to savor. It is beautiful, disastrous and heart-wrenching all at once. It is literary fiction at its absolute best and it should not be missed.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster and Stephen Markley for a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Published on NetGalley, Goodreads and Twitter on 9.5.18.