An Ohio native chronicles his road trip through his complicated home state, which has gotten only more complicated in the Trump era.Giffels, a longtime Akron-based journalist, has no grand unified theory of Ohio to offer, no common denominator for a place that encompasses Deep South, urban, Midwestern, and Appalachian cultures and split political sensibilities. It is, he writes, "an all-American buffet, an uncannily complete everyplace." But he also senses that the loose tethers connecting the state are further unraveling, so he hit the road to understand the fraying. In Lordstown, he found a factory town betrayed first by GM and then by Trump's empty promises of revival. Giffels visited farmers struggling amid tariffs and punishing storms. In Elyria, a community pins its hopes on Amazon building a warehouse on the site of a dead mall; in Dayton, the opioid epidemic persists; in Cincinnati, relations between police and black residents remain tense. Throughout the book, Giffels tries to square these challenges with the fact that the state turned so eagerly to Trump in 2016. To that point, he finds a few lessons in the late Jim Traficant, the corrupt, pugnacious congressperson who still earned respect for a seemingly genuine compassion for the common man. The author's efforts to cover multiple bases can feel breezy at times, and there's little drama in his deep dive into the short-lived presidential candidacy of Tim Ryan. But Giffels also writes gracefully at every stop and actively seeks pockets of sunlight amid the gloom: a boom in craft brewing, hard-nosed progressive activism, and a stubbornness exemplified by Robert Pollard, the Dayton-based frontman of the boozy but indefatigable band Guided by Voices. In Ohio, writes the author, "struggle is a sort of birthright, and it has inspired energy and innovation in the generation that has followed the industrial decline."An affectionate, realistic survey of a state coming back from the brink.

Journalist and Akron native Giffels (coauthor, Wheels of Fortune) explores the qualities that make Ohio a bellwether for the rest of America in this trenchant mix of memoir, reportage, and political analysis. Noting Ohio-s record as the only state to have voted for every winning presidential candidate since 1964, Giffels traveled across the state in 2019 and early 2020 to gauge how its residents were faring in the lead-up to the next election. He interviews a -lifelong Democrat- who considers Trump-s presidency -the best thing that-s happened to America in a long time,- auto workers in shock after G.M. shut down its Lordstown plant, and a divorced single mom who took time off from her two jobs to attend the third annual Women-s March in Washington, D.C. Giffels also reflects on his son-s decision to become a paramedic in the midst of Ohio-s opioid epidemic, and infuses his social commentary with local color and memorable turns-of-phrase (travel mugs are -prime weaponry in any working parent-s arsenal-). Offering tea leaves rather than a crystal ball, Giffels doesn-t definitively answer the question that prompted his study: is America broken? Still, this nuanced and often lyrical account, which ends with Ohio -emerg as a beacon of leadership- during the coronavirus pandemic, offers a measure of hope. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency. (Aug.)