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Dodgers: A Novel
by Bill Beverly

Published: 2016-04-05
Hardcover : 304 pages
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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 ...
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Introduction

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.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of April 2016: Dodgers is a thriller that seems to come out of the blue, a unique novel that could be described as equal parts Richard Price and Mark Twain, but in the end is its own thing entirely. The beginning is familiar: an inner city Los Angeles kid named East is working as a low level hired gun assigned to watch a drug den. When things go bad, he is sent out of town with his wilder half-brother and two older gang members to perform a hit. Their target is a man who is hiding out in Wisconsin. What comes next is a novel that is part road trip, part fish-out-of-water, part violent crime thriller, part coming-of-age, and something else altogether. The sense of empathy that the author, Bill Beverly, creates in the reader is as illuminating as it is unexpected. These are characters who we care for, even if we never expected to, and as East finds himself at a personal crossroads, we are right there with him. I tore through this novel and was genuinely disappointed that it had to end. --Chris Schluep

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  "Some boys become gangsters because that is all they know how to do!"by Gail R. (see profile) 04/25/16

Once begun, this book is really hard to put down. The characters become close to you and you find that you root for some and detest others. The short staccato sentences burst forth on every ... (read more)

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