Dodgers

In this stunning debut, author Bill Beverly delivers a story unlike anything else in fiction: a dark, haunting, literary crime novel that is also a powerful coming-of-age narrative.

Dodgers is the story of a young man named East who works for an LA drug gang, sent by his uncle along with some other teenage boys--including East's hotheaded younger brother--to kill a witness connected to a major case, who is 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, and over the course of his journey the book brings in elements from a diverse array of genres, ranging from crime fiction to road narrative to coming-of-age novel. 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.

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.