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Dodgers
“A dazzling crime novel that’s equal parts coming-of-age tale à la Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and travelogue à la Kerouac . . . Readers won’t soon forget East and his bloody journey of self-discovery and, ultimately, salvation.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“The premise and execution are terrific, and the prose is remarkable: Beverly does more with a sentence than many writers accomplish in a paragraph. East and his compatriots are old before their time, and yet we never lose the sense that they are still growing up, even if their growing up is like that of soldiers dropped behind enemy lines in their first war. . . . Highly recommended for fans of Richard Price, this is a searing novel about crime, race, and coming of age, with characters who live, breathe, and bleed.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Dark, edgy, and riveting and, for all that, deeply, humanly serious, Dodgers is white knuckles for the mind. I love this book and will closely follow Bill Beverly forever hereafter.”
—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
“Not only is the fast-paced and masterfully plotted Dodgers one of the greatest literary crime novels you will read in your lifetime, Bill Beverly has also created in the teenage boy East one of the most unforgettable and heartbreaking characters ever encountered in American fiction.”
—Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff and The Devil All the Time
“Propulsive and brutally honest, yet unexpectedly tender, Dodgers is one of the best debuts I’ve read. I was absolutely gripped by the voice and the world of East and his brother, and surprised at nearly every turn. I audibly gasped at the end.”
—Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising and Pleasantville
DODGERS is a dark, unforgettable coming-of-age journey that recalls the very best of Richard Price, Denis Johnson, and J.D. Salinger. It is the story of a young LA gang member named East, who is sent by his uncle along with some other teenage boys—including East’s hothead younger brother—to kill a key witness hiding out in Wisconsin. The journey takes East out of a city he’s never left and into an America that is entirely alien to him, ultimately forcing him to grapple with his place in the world and decide what kind of man he wants to become.
Written in stark and unforgettable prose and featuring an array of surprising and memorable characters rendered with empathy and wit, Dodgers heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill Beverly grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and studied at Oberlin College and the University of Florida. His research on criminal fugitives and the stories surrounding them became the book On the Lam: Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover’s America. He teaches American literature and writing at Trinity University in Washington, DC.