The question of America’s identity has rarely been more urgent, and no American place has ever more reliably illuminated that identity than Ohio.

Award-winning author and essayist David Giffels, dubbed “the bard of Akron” by the New York Times, has spent a quarter century writing about what it means to live in a state he calls “an all-American buffet, an uncannily complete everyplace.”

As an historic 2020 presidential election approaches, Barnstorming Ohio is Giffels’ account of a year on Ohio’s roads, visiting people and places that offer valuable reflections of the national questions and concerns, as well as astounding electoral clairvoyance—since 1896, Ohio has chosen the winner in twenty-nine of thirty-one presidential elections, more than any other state.

From an autoworker upended by the closing of a GM plant in Lordstown, to a soybean farmer trying to outlast a trade war and historic rainfall, to the aftermath of a mass shooting in Dayton, to newly empowered women voters, Barnstorming Ohio resonates with a chorus asking, “Who will listen to me?”

In a time when Americans are seeking answers, Barnstorming Ohio delivers the people who have always held them.