{"id":115235,"date":"2025-09-02T22:17:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T22:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/115235\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T22:17:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T22:17:13","slug":"read-with-jenna-september-2025-book-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/115235\/","title":{"rendered":"Read With Jenna September 2025 Book Title"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jenna Bush Hager says \u201cBuckeye\u201d by Patrick Ryan, her September 2025 Read With Jenna<\/a> pick, is a \u201conce-in-a-decade novel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou read it once and then, even though it\u2019s 500 pages, want to reread again,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The story is set in the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, \u201cbasically over a lifetime\u201d \u2014 from the start of World War II to the end of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe meet two families whose lives intersect in ways that upon Page 1 you could never expect. We watch as America changes and these two families\u2019 lives change,\u201d Jenna says.<\/p>\n

\""Buckeye"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI underlined so many parts of this book to share as inspiration. I fell in love with these characters,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In the book, Bonhomie locals Margaret Salt and Cal Jenkins come together briefly during the exuberance of the Allied victory in Europe. Jenna says what came next made her cry. <\/p>\n

\u201cNot only because it\u2019s super emotional \u2014 anyone who has ever loved a child or a partner will feel that way. I cried because I was going to miss these characters so very much. I would recommend this book to anybody,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Speaking to TODAY.com, the author says the book was inspired by the town where his father and paternal grandmother were from \u2014 and a situation she was in.<\/p>\n

Ryan learned something about his grandma’s past that sparked the idea for a book: His grandmother had had an affair with a married man who lived a few blocks away. He wondered how that would shape a person\u2019s life. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I quickly realized was I had no interest in writing about her or my family in any way. I just started with the idea of someone in that situation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Enter Margaret’s character, who has a brief affair with a neighbor. Then, he started wondering about her counterpart.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaturally I started thinking, \u2018Who\u2019s his fan? What\u2019s his deal?\u2019 The questions expanded both forward and back in terms of chronology and characters’ lives. Where did they come from? What did I want their arcs to be?\u201d<\/p>\n

He planned on a story that took place over one month, but the idea kept ballooning. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, actually, I think that I want to write about two generations of this family, and I want to write about consequences and deception and betrayal,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

A short-story writer by trade, he constantly felt like he had \u201cbit off more than he could chew,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

Ryan says the novel took six years to complete, plus two more years of edits. He says hearing that his book had been chosen for Read With Jenna was \u201cinconceivable\u201d and something he \u201cdoesn\u2019t know how to describe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked on it for eight years. To do that you have to let go of the idea of any kind of reward. You just have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty \u2014 try not to think about approval and any kind of badge or gold star,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Ryan says he\u2019s been writing since he was 20. He\u2019s written things that \u201cdidn\u2019t pan out\u201d and novels he put away, which he calls \u201clearning curves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way I found to keep going over the years in the face of that kind of adversity was to let go of this idea of the prize and keep telling myself, ‘You\u2019re doing this because you love to do it,’\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

While he wrote \u201cBuckeye,\u201d he looked at a note taped to his desk in his own handwriting: \u201cNo one asked you to write.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was how I had to be, and that was \u2014 that was how I got through. And so then to have that news come along, it was just nothing but happy tears. I just sort of cried happily,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jenna Bush Hager says \u201cBuckeye\u201d by Patrick Ryan, her September 2025 Read With Jenna pick, is a \u201conce-in-a-decade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":["post-115235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}