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A New York Times Notable Book of 2025An NPR Books We Love pick
A New York Times Editors' Choice pickHow to Dodge a Cannonball is a razor-sharp satire that dives into the heart of the Civil War, hilariously questioning the essence of the fight, not just for territory, but for the soul of America.How to Dodge a Cannonball is funnier than the Civil War should ever be. It follows Anders, a teenage idealist who enlists and reenlists to shape the American Future-as soon as he figures out what that is, who it includes, and why everyone wants him to die for it. Escaping his violently insane mother is a bonus.
Anders finds honor as a proud Union flag twirler-until he's captured. Then he tries life as a diehard Confederate-until fate asks him to die hard for the Confederacy at Gettysburg. Barely alive, Anders limps into a Black Union regiment in a stolen uniform. While visibly white, he claims to be an octoroon, and they claim to believe him. Only then does his life get truly strange.
His new brothers are even stranger, including a science-fiction playwright, a Haitian double agent, and a former slave feuding with God. Despite his best efforts, Anders starts seeing the war through their eyes, sparking ill-timed questions about who gets to be American or exploit the theater of war. Dennard Dayle's satire spares no one as doomed charges, draft riots, gleeful arms dealers, and native suppression campaigns test everyone's definition of loyalty.
Uproariously funny and revelatory,
How to Dodge a Cannonball asks if America is worth fighting for. And then answers loudly. Read it while it's still legal.
About the author
Dennard Dayle is a Jamaican American author who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University and received his MFA from Columbia University. His short fiction has appeared in the
New Yorker,
Clarkesworld,
Matchbook, the
Hard Times, and
McSweeney's Internet Tendency. His first book was the short story collection
Everything Abridged. Before taking up fiction and mischief as a full-time job, he was an advertising copywriter who dangerously flirted with stand-up comedy. He teaches as an adjunct at Columbia and recently made the rash decision to take up skateboarding.
Summary
A cutting, revealing caricature of the American Civil War, told through the eyes of a white teenager who joins an all-Black regiment of soldiers, for fans of Colson Whitehead and James McBride.
