{"id":48424,"date":"2018-09-18T09:29:31","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T15:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=48424"},"modified":"2018-09-19T11:50:01","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T17:50:01","slug":"square-books-presents-debut-novelist-stephen-markley-with-ohio-wednesday-september-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/square-books-presents-debut-novelist-stephen-markley-with-ohio-wednesday-september-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Square Books Presents Debut Novelist Stephen Markley with &#8220;Ohio&#8221; Wednesday September 19"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">The debut of a major talent, <em><strong>Ohio<\/strong><\/em> is a lyrical and emotional novel set in an archetypal small town in northeastern Ohio, a region ravaged by the Great Recession, an opioid crisis, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a novel depicting one feverish, fateful summer night in 2013 when four former classmates converge on their hometown, each with a mission, all haunted by the ghosts of their shared histories.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">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\u2019s 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 <strong>Stephen Markley<\/strong>\u2019s brilliant debut novel,\u00a0<i>Ohio<\/i>, inherit. This is New Canaan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">On one fateful summer night in 2013, four former classmates converge on the rust belt town where they grew up, each of them with a mission, all of them haunted by regrets, secrets, lost loves. There\u2019s Bill Ashcraft, an alcoholic, drug-abusing activist, whose fruitless ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park to New Orleans, and now back to \u201cThe Cane\u201d with a mysterious package strapped to the underside of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting the mother of her former lover; Dan Eaton, a shy veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a dinner date with the high school sweetheart he\u2019s tried to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the captain of the football team triggers the novel\u2019s shocking climax.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">At once a murder mystery and a social critique,<i>\u00a0Ohio<\/i>\u00a0ingeniously captures the fractured zeitgeist of a nation through the viewfinder of an embattled Midwestern town and offers a prescient vision for America at the dawn of a turbulent new age.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>About the Author<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Stephen Markley is an author, screenwriter, and journalist. A graduate of the <strong>Iowa Writer\u2019s Workshop<\/strong>, Markley\u2019s previous books include the memoir\u00a0<strong><em>Publish This Book:\u00a0The Unbelievable True Story of How I Wrote, Sold, and Published This Very Book<\/em><\/strong>, and the travelogue\u00a0<strong><i>Tales of Iceland<\/i><\/strong>. He lives in Los Angeles.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The debut of a major talent, Ohio is a lyrical and emotional novel set in an archetypal small<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2239,1],"tags":[5125,13221,5979,13220,13222],"class_list":["post-48424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-literary-events","category-uncategorized","tag-debut","tag-iowa-writers-workshop","tag-ohio","tag-stephen-markley","tag-tales-of-iceland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/9-20-OHIO.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}