How to Dodge a Cannonball bookcover

How to Dodge a Cannonball

A Novel

This title will be released on

calendar iconJune 17, 2025

4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
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Description

A cutting, revealing satire 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

Razor-sharp and hilarious, How to Dodge a Cannonball tells the story of Anders, a white teenager who volunteers to be a Union Army flag-twirler to escape his abusive mother. In desperate acts of self-preservation, he defects—twice—before joining a Black regiment at Gettysburg, claiming to be an octoroon. In his new and entirely incredulous unit, Anders becomes entangled with questionable military men and an arms dealer working for both sides. But more importantly he bonds with the other soldiers, finding friendship and a family he desperately needs. After deploying to New York City to suppress the draft riots and to Nevada to suppress Native Americans, Anders begins to see the war through the eyes of his newfound brothers.

Dayle’s satire spares no one, whether he’s writing about Anders’s naivete and unexpected love interest, the quirks of Confederate and Union soldiers, those out to make a quick buck off the tragedy of war, or the theater of war itself (literal theater , as the novel includes a one-act play the troop obsesses over while they wait for action).

Uproariously funny and revelatory, How to Dodge a Cannonball is an inimitable take on which America is worth fighting for.

Product Details

PublisherHenry Holt and Co.
Publish DateJune 17, 2025
Pages336
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconHardback
EAN/UPC9781250345677
Dimensions234.9 X 6.1 X 25.4 inches | 1.0 pounds

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.

Reviews

One of LitHub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2025

“A heightened examination of America, this funny historical novel puts Dayle’s comedic chops front and center.”
—James Folta, LitHub

“Dennard Dayle’s second book certifies his talent. I can’t think of a wittier, more hilarious or more relevant young writer. How to Dodge a Cannonball is the great Civil War novel I didn’t know I needed, but now it is never leaving my shelf.”
—Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends and Super Sad True Love Story

“This is the Civil War send-up the American canon has been waiting for, and which today’s America, still unsure which version of itself it wants to become, so sorely needs. Dayle is one of our sharpest, funniest, and most unrelenting writers.”
Jessi Jezewska Stevens, author of The Visitors and The Exhibition of Persephone Q

“A sharp and chaotic skewering of everything America believes about itself, told from the point of view of a young man bumbling his way through the horrors of the Civil War. Full of absurdity and humanity in equal measure, Dayle treats warfare with all the reverence and respect it deserves, which is none.”
—Jason Pargin, New York Times bestselling author of I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom and If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe

“Dennard Dayle is an electrifying new voice, savagely funny and scarily smart.”
Susan Choi, author of Trust Exercise and My Education

“I realized what How to Dodge a Cannonball was trying to do a few chapters in, and I scoffed at Dennard Dayle’s hubris. Everyone thinks they can write Catch-22 until they try to write Catch-22. It’s like saying you want to fistfight the sun. I respect the audacity, I just don’t think you can get up there. Here’s the crazy thing: Dayle might have done it. How to Dodge a Cannonball is Catch-22 about the Civil War, complete with all the lighthearted racial commentary you’re worried about. It’s funny, fast, insightful, it has a weird amount of heart, and it’s so dense with jokes you’ll be re-reading it for years and still be catching new ones.”
Robert Brockway, author of Carrier Wave and The Empty Ones

Praise for Everything Abridged: Stories

“Dennard Dayle’s 17 speculative tales, girdled by a Devil’s Dictionary of 501 satiric definitions (literary, political, what-have-you), are by turns prescient of our anxious, conspiracy-fraught times and mournful of majestic worlds to come ruined by all too familiar hatreds. But the post-WWIII stand-up riffs? Truly funny stuff.”
Vulture

“Slyly defiant and blazingly imaginative, like the best modernist literature, Everything Abridged is a powerful celebration of flaw and failure. It’s a book that revels in the timelessness of obsolescence and the freedom of powerlessness. Dayle’s a genre-shattering writer, whose wit and intellect never cease to entertain. This refreshingly original and powerfully funnycollection is a debut to remember.”
―Paul Beatty, New York Times bestselling author of The Sellout

“Written as a dictionary, with hilarious and so-blunt-they're-sharp definitions of terms like ‘LimeWire,’ ‘mouse utopia,’ and ‘Perry, Tyler,’ Dayle's debut collection of stories is as likely to stun as it is to inform. . . incredibly entertaining and so damn illuminating.”
Entertainment Weekly

“With Everything Abridged, Dennard Dayle innovates form as much as he does content, creating a work that is funny and familiar, no matter if he’s writing about comedians from Mars, battery-powered humans, or radicalized comic book writers. Combining wit, humor, and an uncanny ability to get to the heart of what can both plague and save us, Dayle is a writer who isn’t ruffling feathers, but plucking the bird bare, and I am grateful as hell for it. Without a doubt one of the best collections I’ve ever read.”
―Mateo Askaripour, New York Times bestselling author of Black Buck

“Funnier and smarter than pretty much everything else you’ve read in your lifetime.”
―Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances and Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

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