Ohio

New Canaan, Ohio, is the kind of town that both protects and suffocates, a place few people leave physically and never truly leave in spirit. The high school classmates in Ohio spend their youth feeling like the world of New Canaan is their oyster. They couple off, dream big, and don’t worry too much about a future they feel is wide open. What they don’t realize is that the mistakes they make, and the harm they cause, can never truly be left behind. Their regrets and disappointments are ultimately as big as their dreams once were. When the classmates–the ones still alive, that is–reunite in New Canaan, they finally face the dark consequences of long-ago actions, which were waiting for them all along.

Stephen Markley splits the story of these friends into four main narratives, almost novella-like in length, and provides the story of a fateful night from vastly different perspectives. Past and present are recounted and remembered, and the regrets the characters voice are as telling and powerful as the apologies they’re never capable of delivering. New Canaan is no kind of paradise, and its residents are buffeted by the troubled winds of a downward economic spiral, drug abuse, and the unrest of war and terrorism. The solace of community is small; the chance of redemption slim. The past matters. The past, in a place like this, is, ultimately, everything.