On the dock, before Todd Beaufort, sweaty and weeping, finished the deed that would follow him till his death, before he sank her into the depths of that man-made lake, down to the flooded ghost town at the bottom where she drifted into the wreckage of a drugstore on a forgotten Main Street, she understood, vividly, that the most astonishing gift of consciousness was also our tragedy, our cliché, our great curse: Love’s absolute refusal to ever surrender.
And then she was on her way.
Whether you face it abruptly or following a long drift into senescence, there’s that eternal moment the prophets all gossip about: when you see the whole span of yourself, how astonishing and alive you were. However, as Lisa discovered, this eternity feels like nothing at all compared to the length and depth of the Night that comes after. When you cruise by fallen stars and far-flung quasars, forests of staggering pines and winter snows, granite mountains and impenetrable clouds, cooling lava, black oceans and the rivers that feed them, singing caterpillars and screaming bats, the lonely moan of a whale, endless prairies wrung with wind, purple skies and silver rain, the soil of your strange realm. Even the Night has an end, though, beyond which there is only the void, the abyss. It’s the kind of darkness you knew before you feared it. It’s the kind of darkness so inky, oily perfect that even as you stretch your pupils to pull light in, it only grows deeper, and all you can feel is the pressure of cold air on your eyeballs. Oblivion is viewing all of time backward and forward, your voice locked forever in all that dust and collapse and depthless sorrow. But what you can never know, what you could never have believed or hoped to believe on the long and staggering journey home, is that this abyss is holy all the same. You understand even the void is impermanent, that nothingness is unstable and bound, practically galloping, toward new creation on foreign shores.
Stacey and Bill left the bar and stepped into the night. The rain had stopped. A cool, wet sheen covered the pavements, the cars, the sewer grates, and an internal heat leached steam into the air, white specters rising into the ether. Before they could go their separate ways, Bill took Stacey’s arm and pulled her into an embrace.
“You have no idea how much I miss all of them,” he said. “How sorry I am for everything.”
“I know,” she whispered.
She would carry with her what Bill said next.
“Keep searching, Moore.” He pulled away so he could look her in the eye. “Fight like hell. It’s the only thing I’ve ever truly believed. Always, always, always fight like hell.”
And they were gone, these infinitesimal creatures, walking the surface of time, trying and failing to articulate the dreams of ages, born and wandering across the lonesome heavens.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I can’t be the first author to believe he’s mostly clueless, who understands his real skill in life has been to pull into his orbit a vast array of tireless mentors and fearless fellow travelers who, like an antigravitational force, have kept the walls of his wormhole from caving in time after time. But I have to keep this hulking paragraph narrowed down to those specific to this book, who offered counsel, consolation, and compassion during the four years of its gestation. (Rest assured, I’ve kept a list of grudges, rivalries, bitter recriminations, and plans for petty revenge in a separate Word doc.) First, there is the vast panoply of tornadic personalities, gutsy genius, and shameless alcoholism that is Iowa. Some very smart writers read and reacted to early portions of this book, including Fatima Mirza, Tim Taranto, Anna Bruno, Willa Richards, Noel Carver, Jennie Lin, Anna Parker, Jed Cohen, Harry Stecopoulos, and Katelyn Williams. Three of my great friends, Jamel Brinkley, Charlotte Crowe, and Patrick Connelly, read early drafts and offered important guidance on the way forward. Ethan Canin is about as generous, headstrong, and brilliant a teacher and writer as you’ll find walking the earth. He read this novel in an embryonic stage and his encouragement allowed me to navigate the confusing choices and subtle anarchies that were to come. Sam Chang, Nimo Johnson, Charlie D’Ambrosio, and Karen Russell have my blind allegiance forever. I’d drive all night to bail any of you out of jail. Deb, Connie, and Jan—you three outrageously and transparently collect thank-yous in the acknowledgments pages of contemporary novels, and here’s one more. Drew Emerson, Jon Erwin, and Kevin Hanson provided me with deep insight into military life and the incommunicable nature of deployment, of being at war in the twenty-first century, but also with unexpected and enduring friendships, for which I’m far more grateful. Delaney Nolan never read a word of this book, but she inadvertently helped me think through the nature of loss, of wanting something of yourself back that has departed, one night when we broke into a backyard tree house on Maple Street to smoke a joint and hide from an insane thunderstorm. Susan Golomb threw elbows, broke noses, and dislocated shoulders to get this book sold. I owe her forever. They say editors don’t edit anymore, but then what the hell was Cary Goldstein doing? This book took a quantum leap when Cary got involved. And even after I thought I’d Beautiful Minded this thing to asymptotic perfection, Jonathan Evans supervised Dominick Montalto as he scoured it with a staggering attention to detail (I’ll never forgive myself for misremembering the Cavs’ 2007 playoff run). Steven Bauer continues to ride herd and remains the most important mentor I met as a wandering youth. As for my weird nuclear cell, Laurie, Bob, Lucinda, and Hannah, thank you for your DNA, your support, and your general tolerance of my irreducible rascality. However, the greatest debt of gratitude I owe is to Karen Parkman, a stunning human, a brave mind, a soulful witch, who read my future, who helped me to cross the finish line, who laughed and cried at all the bizarre stories of my wild home. Finally, I have to acknowledge the friends and peers who, as I worked, were never far from my mind: Nick Savoia, Sarah Pressler, Dustin Whitford, Ben Laymon, Tim Barnes, Brent Jones, Carl Culbertson, Josh McCoy, Nate Smith, and Chris O’Hara. Over the years, in different ways, you all have followed me, haunted me, and made me wonder how things might have been different.
READING GROUP GUIDE
This reading group guide for Ohio includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Stephen Markley. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Since the turn of the century, a generation has come of age knowing only war, recession, political gridlock, racial hostility, and a simmering fear of environmental calamity. In the country’s forgotten pockets, where industry long ago fled, where foreclosures, Walmarts, and opiates riddle the land, death rates for rural whites have skyrocketed, fueled by suicide, addiction and a rampant sense of marginalization and disillusionment. This is the world the characters in Stephen Markley’s brilliant debut novel, Ohio, inherit. This is New Canaan.