This big, beautifully-written book follows two couples through the decades from WWII to Vietnam. The story creates a genuine feel for middle-America during those eras and covers serendipitous meetings, closely-hidden personal secrets, and how they weave misunderstandings into family lore. It covers tradition and the breaking of tradition, mediums and belief, childhood friendships, and what it means to be parents, partners, and friends through life's trials. A wonderful, warm, and thoughtful novel.
Publisher description:
In Bonhomie, Ohio, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: She is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship, out of harm’s way—until a telegram suggests that the unthinkable might have happened. Later, as the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie—but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to reexamine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.