A New York Times Editor’s Choice PIck

How 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.

How 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.

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Anders is having a rough adolescence, thanks in part to a difficult mother. Then he gets caught up in the Civil War, initially as a Union flag twirler, then as a Confederate, until his comrade's brutal death at Gettysburg, after which he dons a Union uniform and reinvents himself as a biracial recruit. Deployed with a Negro squad, Anders is taken under the wing of Gleason, a wannabe writer who relies on Anders' literacy, a scarce quality, to help create his imponderable works of "speculative dramaturgy." Through battles, skirmishes, forced marches, and creakily improvised theater productions, Anders' many talents come to the fore, including his skill at flag twirling, which can have surprisingly lethal results. As the army advances, he will encounter a white-passing teen cross-dresser, a grandiloquent cynic and arms dealer, and two would-be queens, allegedly descendants of the House of Hanover via assorted dalliances with the Founding Fathers. Yet it's his connection to his Black fellow soldiers that most resonates. Initially a caricature of a white clueless liberal, Anders evolves, gradually recognizing the fundamental evil of slavery and the essential hypocrisy of a war in which "Black men are dying to prove they deserve to live. Dayle's first novel is a sharp satire and rousing picaresque adventure tinged with the melancholy of disillusionment. Copyright 2025 Booklist Reviews.