Dodgers

A Novel

By: Bill Beverly

Narrated by: JD Jackson

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.

Winner of the LA TIMES Book Prize of 2017 for Best Mystery/Thriller

Winner of the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger 2016 for Best Crime Novel of the Year

Winner of the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger 2016 for Best Debut Crime Novel

Winner of the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award

Finalist for the PEN/Heminghway Award 2017 for Debut Fiction

Longlisted for Andrew Carnegie Medal 2017 for Excellence in Fiction

Nominated for the Edgar Award 2017 for Best First Novel

©2016 Bill Beverly (P)2016 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Not only is the fast-paced and masterfully plotted Dodgers one of the greatest literary crime novels you will read in your lifetime, Bill Beverley 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, brutally honest and yet unexpectedly tender, Dodgers is one of the best debuts I've read. I was absolutely gripped by the voice, the world of East and his brother, and surprised at nearly ever turn. I audibly gasped at the end." (Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising and Pleasantville)

"Reading Dodgers is like having the veil lifted from your eyes: The world is more vivid, more intense, more exquisite, and more terrifying than you ever knew. Bill Beverly is a conjurer, a poet of the dark arts, and his novel is a spell: When he sends his young drug-world protagonist on a deadly errand in the alien landscape east of LA - that fat swath of America known to him only by its names and its shapes on maps - it is you who makes the journey, who is the stranger in a strange land, a watcher who now feels the eyes of others wherever you go, and who must pay the devastating tolls of crossing boundaries. Hypnotic, breath-taking, bruising, beautiful, important, true - choose your adjectives, this is a great novel." (Tim Johnston, author of Descent)

Great narration, story was ok

This story was decent but it didn't move me in an way. You know how a great story will make you think and reflect and it will stay with you after you finish? None of that happened for me with this one. The narrator was excellent.

Dodgers leave L.A!! What's the world coming to?

A “road trip” novel worth reading.

Like any classic road trip, this is a voyage of discovery, but one that follows a different route than normally taken in this genre. It’s not about a white youth heading west, which has been the classic narrative in most American road trip stories since Jack Kerouac – hell, since Frederick Jackson Turner.

Instead, it’s a road trip story for a modern, urban, American reality: a black youth heading East (the youth happens to be named East; the hero as the homonym). East heading east, fleeing from the past instead of journeying into the future, disappearing into the hinterland instead of arriving wide-eyed and innocent at the Pacific coast. Encountering personal limitation and responsibilities instead of liberation and possibilities.

Some critics have compared East with Holden Caulfield, narrator of The Catcher in the Rye. Others with Raskalnikov in Crime and Punishment. Perhaps a better comparison would be to Huckleberry Finn. (East’s uncle, by the way, is named Fin. This cannot be by accident. Beverly's symbolism is very purposeful, if not always subtle). In many ways this novel is a photo negative of that original American road story, with East = Huck (and Michael Wilson + Walter + Perry = Jim?).

But I kept referring back to “Easy Rider”, the cult-classic Peter Fonda/Dennis Hopper film. (East's nickname is Easy....) Here we have the same aimless meandering toward the same inevitable conclusion. The same admonitions: “America is burning” says the final image in the movie. “America is strung out”, says the book. Everybody is addicted to something: heroin, money, guns, paintball, donuts.

In both the movie and the novel, we are left with a future that looks very bleak, a future that seems stacked against us. Stacked against a black youth from the inner city, to be sure. But maybe stacked against us all. Can our GPS calculate an escape from mortality?

A very worthwhile novel with a good story and a serious purpose. A novel as metaphor for the State of the Nation. You ain't in the conversation if you haven't read it. Narration competent but not memorable.

narration hard to parse

Would you be willing to try another one of J. D. Jackson’s performances?

The narrator emphasizes words and syllables seemingly without regard for their meaning, e.g. "rocking HORSE," "LOG cabin," "curved window GLASS." Sometimes the odd diction choices make the prose hard to understand.

Wow, what a book!

I didn't know what to expect but I loved this book. Deep and exciting story. Awesome use of words and imagery. The audible performance really pulled me in. I was sad when it ended but totally satisfied.

I didn't want this book to be over.

Loved both the narrator and the narration of the main character, East. Very fulfilling novel.

Excellent book. Well done.

A most poignant piece of literature. The story has a wonderful twist and turn. It really captures the essence of each character.

Dark, haunting, exciting, unforgettable.

Any additional comments?

One of the benefits of being on the road a lot lately is listening to audio books (my delivery system of choice is Audible). I am rather selective and read a fair number of reviews, so most are at least good. Every once in a while, a book is superlative. Such is the case with Bill Beverly's Dodgers, A Novel.

It is a dark, thrilling, haunting, coming-of-age story laid out in a long road trip across America, from South Central Los Angeles to small-town in the mid-west. It raises questions of race, socio-economics, how difficult it is to unbind ourselves from our pasts and what "family" means.

It is one of the best novels I've ever read, which brings me to one of my only two regrets about this book.

The first regret is that I listened to it in my car, with all the inherent distractions involved. The reader was absolutely superb, but I wish I had been lost in the printed pages of this beautiful work rather than stopping and starting and periodically trying not to crash.

My second regret? It appears to be Bill Beverly's only book so far. If that's so, the world is fortunate, because I suspect there will be more greatness on it's way.

Amazing

I loved this book. The author is great. The book gives me hope. I did not want the book to end

Truly entertaining an original story

This is a great listen narrator is excellent the story is fantastically original get you into the mind of a young fatherless for I highly recommend it

Review of Dodgers

Other than East, the characters didn’t generate much feeling one way or the other. The story just seemed to plod along