Ohio

On one fateful night in 2013, four former classmates converge on the town where they grew up, each of them with a mission. There’s Bill Ashcraft, an alcoholic, drug-abusing activist, who has come back to “The Cane” with a mysterious package strapped to the underside of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting her former lover’s mother; Dan Eaton, a shy Iraq veteran, home for a dinner date with the high school sweetheart he’s tried to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the captain of the football team triggers the novel’s shocking climax.

Both a murder mystery and a social critique, Ohio perfectly captures the fractured zeitgeist of a nation through the viewfinder of an embattled Midwestern town, ravaged by the recession, an opioid crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Markley’s brilliant debut novel offers a prophetic vision for America at the dawn of a turbulent new age.

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Click here for an audio excerpt

Click here for Stephen Markley’s author profile in Publisher’s Weekly, written by Wendy Werris

Click here for Stephen Markley’s website

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