Ohio shows up in so many different kinds of stories. You can find tales set in its bustling cities, quiet small towns, and forgotten corners.
Authors have used Ohio settings for everything from family sagas and mysteries to science fiction adventures and deeply personal histories.
If you enjoy reading books grounded in a real place, here are some novels where Ohio serves as the backdrop, sometimes almost like a character itself.
Toni Morrison, born in Lorain, Ohio, sets her first novel right there in her hometown. The story takes place after the Great Depression. It focuses on Pecola Breedlove, a young Black girl who absorbs the painful messages of racism and abuse around her.
She desperately wishes for blue eyes because she thinks they represent beauty and acceptance. You follow her story and see how the world’s pressures affect her sense of self.
This book is a collection of short stories, all connected to the fictional town of Winesburg. Sherwood Anderson lets you peek into the lives of various residents. Each story introduces a different character and quietly uncovers their hidden thoughts, frustrations, and dreams.
You really get a feel for the isolation and unspoken feelings that can exist within a small community.
Another incredible book by Toni Morrison, this one takes place in Ohio after the Civil War. Sethe is a woman who escaped the horrors of slavery, but her past follows her. She tries to make a new life with her daughter, Denver.
Things take a strange and haunting turn when a young woman named Beloved appears. Her arrival forces Sethe to face memories she buried deep inside. It’s a powerful story about freedom, memory, and the enduring pain of slavery.
Donald Ray Pollock paints a gritty picture of southern Ohio and West Virginia in this novel. The characters seem caught in dark patterns of violence and twisted faith.
You meet an orphaned boy, a murderous husband-and-wife team, a corrupt preacher, and others whose lives cross in shocking ways. The rural setting feels bleak and isolated; it pulls you into a world where desperate people make desperate choices.
Ernest Cline imagines a future Columbus, Ohio, where life is pretty grim. People escape into a huge virtual reality world called the OASIS. The main character, Wade Watts, lives in the “stacks”—precarious towers of trailers.
He spends his time searching for hidden puzzles left by the OASIS’s creator. The creator promised his entire fortune to the first person who could solve them all.
The book is full of 80s pop culture references as Wade competes against powerful corporations in this digital treasure hunt.
This novel follows a young man from Cleveland. He drops out of college, becomes an Army medic in Iraq, and comes home deeply scarred by PTSD. His life spirals into heroin addiction, and he starts robbing banks to support his habit.
Nico Walker wrote this based on his own experiences, so the story feels incredibly raw and immediate. It’s an intense look at trauma, addiction, and the consequences that follow.
Set in Ohio’s Amish country, this story introduces Joe, a former baseball player with a troubled past. He arrives in Sugarcreek with his young son and hopes for a new beginning. He finds shelter at an inn run by three well-meaning, somewhat nosy Amish sisters.
Their caretaker, Rachel, doesn’t quite trust Joe. As his secrets begin to surface, the plot explores themes of trust, forgiveness, and kindness within the Amish community.
Daniel Keyes tells the true story of Billy Milligan, an Ohio man arrested for serious crimes in the late 1970s. What made his case famous was his diagnosis of multiple personality disorder (now Dissociative Identity Disorder).
The book explores his therapy sessions and legal battles. It shows how different personalities within him, like the protector Arthur or the volatile Ragen, seemed responsible for different actions. You learn about his life through these distinct identities.
This story is about thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle. She travels from Ohio to Idaho with her grandparents. Her goal is to find her mother, who left the family. During the long drive, Sal tells her grandparents the story of her friend Phoebe Winterbottom back in Ohio.
Phoebe’s own family life has its share of mysteries. Sal’s journey across the country mirrors her own story of love, loss, and understanding her family history.
Sharon Draper sets this modern story in Cincinnati. Romiette, who is African American, and Julio, who is Mexican American, fall in love. Their relationship is tested by prejudice from their peers and threats from a local gang.
They have to navigate family disapproval and community tensions. The story looks at young love against a backdrop of cultural conflict and danger.
David Foster Wallace’s first novel is a wild ride set mainly in Cleveland in 1990. Lenore Beadsman works at a publishing house.
Her life gets strange when her great-grandmother, a former student of Wittgenstein, disappears from her nursing home along with 25 other residents and staff. The plot includes oddities like a talking pet cockatiel named Vlad the Impaler and Lenore’s therapist who tries too hard.
It’s a book full of quirky characters and questions about identity and reality.
This unique book mostly takes place inside the head of an Ohio housewife.
Written almost entirely as one long stream-of-consciousness sentence, it captures her thoughts as she bakes pies, worries about her family, remembers the past, and considers global issues like climate change.
You get lost in the rhythm of her internal monologue, which ranges from everyday tasks to deeper anxieties. The Ohio setting shapes her experiences and concerns.
Philip Roth tells the story of Marcus Messner. He’s a smart, intense young Jewish man from Newark, New Jersey, who goes to a conservative college in Ohio in 1951, partly to escape his butcher father’s anxieties.
Marcus struggles against the school’s strict rules and social codes. He clashes with the dean and becomes involved with a troubled classmate, Olivia. The novel explores conformity, rebellion, and how choices can lead to unexpected outcomes during the Korean War era.
This book starts as a true-crime mystery in Akron, Ohio. Years ago, a mysterious recluse nicknamed “the man with a thousand mittens” was murdered, and the case went cold. Author David Neff decides to investigate this bizarre crime.
His search pulls him into a story that becomes much stranger than he expected. It blends detective work with elements of science fiction, family secrets, and time travel in surprising ways.
While much of this sweeping novel takes place in Kentucky, focusing on a powerful horse-breeding family, parts of their history and ambition connect to Ohio. The story follows Henry Forge and his daughter Henrietta. They are driven to breed a legendary racehorse.
Their pursuit unearths deep family secrets tied to race, legacy, and the land across generations. The Ohio connections touch on land ownership and the broader historical context.
Curtis Sittenfeld updates Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and sets it in modern-day Cincinnati. The Bennet family lives here, and daughters Liz (a magazine writer) and Jane (a yoga instructor) return home when their father has a health scare.
They encounter Chip Bingley, a doctor who appeared on a reality dating show, and his friend Fitzwilliam Darcy, a neurosurgeon. It’s a fun, contemporary take on the classic story, complete with emails, CrossFit, and Cincinnati society.
This novel focuses on the quiet complexities of family life. Tricia brings her two young sons for their annual summer visit to her sister Dinah’s home in Ohio.
Over the course of the visit, the characters reflect on their relationships, past choices, and the small moments that define their connections. It’s a story about the bonds between siblings, parents, and children, observed with sensitivity.
Virginia Hamilton wrote this atmospheric mystery for young readers. Thomas Small and his family move into a huge, old house in Ohio. Thomas learns the house was once an important station on the Underground Railroad, owned by the abolitionist Dies Drear.
The place is full of secret passages and unsettling legends. Thomas begins to explore its history and encounters mysteries that might still be alive within its walls.
Set in the 19th century, this dark historical novel begins in an Ohio asylum. Grace is committed there after suffering severe trauma. She escapes the asylum’s cruelty through an unusual arrangement.
She begins to secretly assist a visiting doctor who investigates crimes by analyzing criminals’ minds. Grace uses her sharp observation skills to help solve murders, which gives her a path toward reclaiming her own life.
In a small Ohio town called St. Jude, high school student Adam McCormick feels like an outsider. His life changes after Jamie Marks, a classmate who was bullied and recently found dead, appears to him as a ghost. Adam forms a strange bond with the ghost.
This connection leads him into a haunting exploration of death, loneliness, and the hidden lives of people in his community.
This book offers a peek into the exclusive world of Hunting Hills, Ohio. Claire, a former journalist, marries into wealth and tries to fit into this privileged suburban life.
She finds herself up against Marti, the reigning social queen who guards the community’s secrets fiercely. Underneath the perfect exteriors lie scandals, affairs, and hidden tensions that threaten to disrupt everything.
Similar to “Winesburg, Ohio,” this novel draws from Sherwood Anderson’s own youth in Ohio. It tells the story of a boy named Tar Moorhead (a stand-in for Anderson).
You follow Tar as he experiences family life, school days, and the small events that shape a childhood in a late 19th-century Midwestern town. Anderson captures the feeling of growing up in that time and place.
This is the final book in Conrad Richter’s “The Awakening Land” trilogy. It continues the story of Sayward Luckett Wheeler and her family. The novel shows the transition from pioneer life to a more established town in Ohio.
Sayward, now older, witnesses the changes in her community and family. She grapples with progress and the loss of the old ways. It’s a thoughtful portrait of growth and endurance.
The first book in Richter’s trilogy introduces Sayward Luckett as a young girl. Her family moves into the dense, imposing forests of Ohio in the late 1700s. Life is incredibly hard; they must clear land, hunt for food, and survive the isolation of the wilderness.
The book vividly portrays the challenges and determination of early settlers who faced the untamed landscape. Sayward’s strength emerges as she adapts to this demanding life.
Theodore Dreiser tells the story of Jennie Gerhardt, a young woman from a poor background in Columbus, Ohio. Her family struggles financially. Jennie’s path leads her into relationships with wealthy men who offer support but also place her in difficult social positions.
The novel examines themes of class differences, morality, and the sacrifices Jennie makes as she seeks love and security in a society quick to judge her.
Published posthumously, this novel revisits the fictional Ohio town of Xenia (also the setting of Santmyer’s massive “...And Ladies of the Club”). It takes place in the 1930s and focuses on a circle of women.
They reflect on their lives, friendships, and the passage of time in their close-knit community. The story unfolds through their conversations and memories; it captures the quiet rhythms and enduring bonds of small-town life.
Also set in Xenia, Ohio, this earlier novel centers on a conflict within one household. A young girl named Lucy lives with her reserved mother and her formidable, music-loving grandmother. Tensions rise over family secrets, independence, and control.
The grandmother’s imposing mansion, filled with history and valuable antiques, becomes a stage for their emotional battles. It’s a story about the strong wills of three generations of women.