[In the following review of a reissue of Ohio Town, Myers says that this book of essays is superior to Santmyer's more famous “… And Ladies of the Club.”]

Loris C. Troyer's Portage Pathways and Helen Hooven Santmyer's Ohio Town reflect two very different approaches to local history, from counties at opposite ends of the state. Troyer, an editor emeritus of the Ravenna-Kent Record-Courier, chronicles important people and events in a portion of the old Western Reserve. Troyer's book is a compilation of columns on Portage County history written after his retirement in 1982. Santmyer, a former professor of English, librarian, and dean of women who published several books in her lifetime, writes a more impressionistic work, portraying the life of the Greene County town of Xenia by focusing on the places which figured strongly in people's lives. A re-issue of a work first published in 1962, Santmyer's book is a valuable resource for local historians in the wake of the 1974 tornado which devastated Xenia. …

Santmyer is better known for her ponderous 1982 work of fiction, “… And Ladies of the Club,” than for the non-fictional Ohio Town. The novel gained her some notoriety at the time of its re-publication in 1984 thanks to some effective promotion by the Book-of-the-Month Club. Ohio Town, originally published in 1962 and now reissued in paperback with added photoplates, is really a better book. Its prose is pleasing, even graceful, and its vignettes of life in Xenia before the First World War give the reader a sense of verisimilitude and provide a paradigm for the history of small American towns everywhere.

This is no Winesburg, Ohio, however. Unlike many well-known writers of her generation, Santmyer does not cast a cynical eye on her hometown, but rather looks upon it with bemused nostalgia. She views places and people of Xenia from the point of view of the young person she once was and tries to reconstruct the ambiance of town life for the reader. In the chapter entitled “The Courthouse,” for instance, she points to the pre-eminence of the courthouse clock tower, “which can be read from as far away as you can see” (11) and literally marks out the times of people's lives with its chime. She resurrects the sights, sounds, and smells of an old-fashioned downtown and the history of many of the venerable homes in Xenia which “have their names and pedigrees” (79).

Santmyer does not neglect the “other side” of town, however. In “The East End,” she tells the story of the section reserved for African-Americans, who comprised more of the town's population than in many comparably sized Ohio towns. Santmyer portrays a relationship between blacks and whites which was “easy and comfortable” (94) even if the races did not live together. One wonders whether black residents perceived their lives in terms quite so beneficent.

She also paints vivid pictures of schoolroom life in the early 1900's: “a noisy roomful of children in motion, where chalk, erasers, spitballs, and wet sponges filled the air” (170), a place where every commencement ceremony “included a valedictory, and a Latin as well as an English salutatory” and children respectfully watched “slim, wide-hatted girls with roses coming down tree-shaded streets” (176).

Santmyer laments the passages of certain institutions like the old opera house, whose lectures and musical and theatrical productions chronicled the cultural history of the town. She also remembers how “[n]o one of my generation grew up in any county seat in America without consciousness of a certain relationship between himself and the railroad” and regrets that the younger generation will likely not know “how exciting it is to step on a Pullman” or “to have seen the end of your own train whipping around a curve behind you” (250).

In short, if Troyer's historical notes are those of a journalist dedicated to “the facts,” Santmyer's are those of a poet. While Troyer, for example, chronicles many of the important people and events associated with the Kent Town Hall, Santmyer remembers general impressions, like the “consciousness of the [courthouse] tower with its four-faced clock, the goose-girl drinking fountain on the Main Street curb, the spread of lawn, and the trees in the square” (3). Troyer's book is mostly an interesting source of information and local color for those interested in the old Western Reserve. Santmyer's transcends specific facts but lets the reader step into history.