Set in 2013 over the course of a single evening, 4 former high school classmates return to their hometown in northern Ohio. The novel is sort of written as four connected novellas, converging at the end to explain a mystery you weren't even really sure was there. I loved this book so much. Each story from the four main characters like a novel all on it's own, but each is connected to the others in so many ways. Through the lives of the four main characters, Markley creates a portrait of life in America, how 9/11 and the Iraq war changed the lives of those involved or those who violently opposed the war. How drugs and poverty drive people to desperate situations, and how guilt and trauma can live with us for years and push us to make drastic choices. If you're looking for a novel you can get completely submerged in, and think about for a long time after, this is the book for you.

This is an absolutely incredible novel. I wasn't sure what to think when I first started reading, but within a few chapters I'd been pulled in completely and I genuinely could not stop reading this. The four character's stories converge perfectly, and each voice is distinct and utterly believable. I don't want to give a synopsis of the plot, because I don't think I can do it justice without spilling spoilers, but this is an amazingly clever, well constructed story, and I can't recommend it enough!

This is one of the top books of 2019, a must read portrait of small town America beautifully crafted by Stephen Markley. Spanning the young lives of the five protagonists, from their school years to the abyss of the post college decision making, Markley shows the importance of place in one’s formative years, all the characters are dragged, by an almost magnetic pull, back to the place of their upbringing. Despite many of them ending up a long way from their Ohio childhood, they seems unable to escape its influence. However, what impressed me most in Markely’s descriptions of the working class area of the Midwest was his profound sympathy with the portraits he depicts. If Franzen, at his best, depicts a Bush-era America, Markley’s novel attempts to explore a state that voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election and the reasons for this vote. From Iraq to domestic politics, Markley not only illustrates the events that led to the election of Trump but also attempts to sympathise with those feelings of discontent and avoids becoming judgemental. The ending I found slightly contrived and sloppy, but this hardly took from the nuanced and vivid picture that Markley had created, which kept me thinking about the novel for weeks. I received this book for free in exchange for a review and I am very glad I did, it may well go down as one of the ‘Trump-era Novels’.