Excerpt from Buckeye by Patrick Ryan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He switched on the Zenith, surfed the wheeze and static for whatever she was hoping to hear, and within seconds he found it: Truman, informing the country that Germany had surrendered to the Allied forces. It was the announcement everyone had been anticipating. Hitler had been dead for a week. The Nazis had surrendered the Netherlands to the British five days earlier. Still, the news was breathtaking. Through the hopper window that opened onto the street they heard shouts and whistles. A car horn tap-tap-tapping. Then another, and another.

"Jeez," Cal said. "Can you imagine what it's like in Berlin right now? I probably would've been there, if it weren't for ..." He wobbled his shoe with the extra-thick sole.

But she was looking at the caramel-colored radio. Her eyes were glistening. "Do you think—" she said, then paused as if unsure of what she wanted to ask him. She took a breath. "Do you think people will start coming home?"

"From Europe? I hope so. But Hirohito's still giving us a run. They might send those guys over to the Pacific."

The woman blinked against the sting in her eyes and, as Truman continued talking, looked at this hardware store clerk who, when he'd been sitting behind the counter, had been almost handsome with his gray-blue eyes, his wavy blond hair that looked as if he'd just raked his fingers through it, his narrow jaw, and an early set of lines framing his mouth. Now that she could see all of him, he was still almost handsome but in a different way. He wasn't very tall, and his stance was off, his hips pitched at an almost uncomfortable-looking angle. His gold-and-black-striped tie was tucked between two buttons halfway down the front of his oxford shirt and looked wrong that way; she wanted to pluck it out. Instead, she took him by his shoulders, pulled him toward her, and kissed him.

Cal would have gasped if his lips weren't against hers. They kissed until Truman finished speaking. When they stepped back, she turned off the radio. He heard her sniffle, offered her his handkerchief. She touched it to the outside corners of her eyes as she glanced at the cot and pint-size desk, the brown bag with the apple beside it, the library book with the swashbuckling cover. "Does a child live down here?"

"No—" Cal couldn't account for the alarm in his voice. The awkwardness of their proximity, maybe. Now that the announcement was over, they had no reason to be in the basement. "This is just where we do the invoicing and ordering, and—"

She said, "I'm Margaret, by the way. Salt, like the shaker."

"Cal Jenkins."

They shook hands—and smiled at how formal that felt, given what had just happened between them.

"I should go," Margaret said.

He followed her back upstairs, his shoes clomping unevenly. She told him she'd been walking down the street and had noticed people rushing to their cars, everyone switching on their radios, she could tell something was happening but hadn't known whom to approach. She thanked him, then ran her eyes over the shelves, the endcap displays. "I've lived in this town for almost six years and I've never been in here once."

Cal just nodded, thinking, I would've remembered you.

He watched through the front window as she made her way up the sidewalk. Car horns were still sounding off. A boy had climbed onto the mailbox across the street and was making a bullhorn with his hands, broadcasting the surrender. Cal ought to call home, he knew, see if Becky had the radio on. She would want to know, even if she wouldn't want to talk to him. He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and spotted a smear of coral lipstick on his thumb, astounded all over again by what had just happened. As long as he remained standing at this window, he told himself, as long as Margaret Salt was still in his sight, he was still the guy who'd had to wipe a beautiful stranger's coral lipstick off his face.

Buckeye copyright © 2025 by Patrick Ryan. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. Cannot be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.