When Does "Buckeye" (2025) Take Place?
"Buckeye" is a historical fiction novel written by Patrick Ryan that released September 2nd, 2025. So when is "Buckeye" set?
It takes place in the years:
We know this because at the start of the main action after the phrase "The next day," partway through this massive flashback there's a scene in which Fink's Drugstore worker Mary Lisnik says, "They're bombing Australia" and, in return, 'The sack-headed man looked up from his sandwich. "That was last week." ' so she replies back, "This is today's paper,"... "so I guess they were still bombing it yesterday." In the real world, Japan began an intermittent series of aerial bombings of Australia's coastline on February 19th, 1942 AD. She then moves onto "Now they're rounding up everyone who's Japanese in California. Even the American ones." referring to the US illegal forced internment of 120,000 Japanese-American citizens from across the Western USA. This processes started on the very same day: February 19th, 1942 AD. So it must be February of 1942 AD or very soon after at this point. [HOWEVER, the flashback begins with the phrase "Three and a half years earlier"... during the May 1945 AD segment. The narrator soon claims "It was January of 1942, less than a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor." So it should be January of 1942 AD at the flashback's start but, presumably, this is a production mistake.]
1942 AD - 2005? AD
We know this because at the start of the main action after the phrase "The next day," partway through this massive flashback there's a scene in which Fink's Drugstore worker Mary Lisnik says, "They're bombing Australia" and, in return, 'The sack-headed man looked up from his sandwich. "That was last week." ' so she replies back, "This is today's paper,"... "so I guess they were still bombing it yesterday." In the real world, Japan began an intermittent series of aerial bombings of Australia's coastline on February 19th, 1942 AD. She then moves onto "Now they're rounding up everyone who's Japanese in California. Even the American ones." referring to the US illegal forced internment of 120,000 Japanese-American citizens from across the Western USA. This processes started on the very same day: February 19th, 1942 AD. So it must be February of 1942 AD or very soon after at this point. [HOWEVER, the flashback begins with the phrase "Three and a half years earlier"... during the May 1945 AD segment. The narrator soon claims "It was January of 1942, less than a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor." So it should be January of 1942 AD at the flashback's start but, presumably, this is a production mistake.]
Soon, the phrase "Five weeks and as many dates later, they were standing in line on a snowy sidewalk in front of the Bonhomie Bijou about to see Valley of the Sun" and "Valley of the Sun" (1942) released in theaters on February 6th, 1942 AD in the real world. So it must be early April of 1942 AD at this point.
2.1942 + 4 weeks(1 month) + 1 week = 4.1942.
A letter Everett Jenkins writes to the real-world United States of American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is shared with the reader and begins "As it is now August of 1943 and we are more than a year and a half into our involvement in the carnage of young men dying on land and at sea" so it is most likely August of 1943 AD by this point.
The narrator later specifically says "One cold, clear Saturday afternoon in April, when Skip was almost a month old"... so the story seems to have extended into April of 1944 AD by this time.
Later, we're told "THE PROFILE, CALLED "Comfort in a Tine of War," appeared in the January 1945 issue of The Séance Précis and two weeks later the Toledo Blade ran an extract of it in the style section." followed by "One letter stood out, though. It arrived several weeks after the extract of her profile ran in the Blade"... so the characters have reached early 1945 AD and are finally almost caught up to the May of 1945 AD prologue by "chapter three".
Additionally, there are multiple prologues at the start of "chapter one" in "PART I":
The first depicts a school-age scene from Cal Jenkins' childhood that is unplaceable other than being after his birth in 1920 AD (since the book's opening line is: "Cal Jenkins was born in the spring of 1920"...) and before the United States of America entered World War II in December of 1941 AD (as this quick scene ends with ..."years later, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor"...).
The second is essentially a flashforward and includes US President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) "informing the country that Germany had surrendered to the Allied forces." via radio. This event is referred to as V-E Day and it occurred on May 8th, 1945 AD in the real world. So it is May of 1945 AD at this point.
