BookBrowse Reviews How to Dodge a Cannonball by Dennard Dayle

BookBrowse:

Riotously funny yet clear-eyed about America's sins, Dennard Dayle's How to Dodge a Cannonball is a delirious and ultimately painful satire set in the American Civil War.

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How to Dodge a Cannonball tells the story of Anders, a poor white boy from Illinois who, like his family members before him, twirls flags during war. Naive, garrulous, and focused above all on self-preservation, he deserts from one side of the Civil War to the other and back again. When his involvement in the ill-fated Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg goes awry, he deserts the Confederacy, takes the uniform of a dead Black Union soldier, and joins an all-Black regiment, passing himself off as an "octoroon."

There, he meets Gleason, an idealistic intellectual who specializes in "speculative dramaturgy"; Thomas, Gleason's de facto second-in-command; Joaquin, a former Haitian revolutionary described by one character, not inaccurately, as a "knife pervert"; and Mole, a taciturn giant whose past as a slave still haunts him. Together, they're shunted from one lousy job to another, doing the bidding of a government that doesn't even try to hide their contempt for them and an amoral arms dealer who sells to both the Union and the Confederacy.

If this sounds like it could be the premise of a didactic satire where the only laughs are dry and mirthless, don't worry: How to Dodge a Cannonball is seriously, genuinely funny. Dennard Dayle's Twitter (now X) bio describes him as a "local prankster," and the book is suffused with a freewheeling sensibility to match. The dialogue hits the same sweet spot as a Coen brothers movie, funny and literary without getting too cute (a representative example: "At least I didn't run like a scared dog. I ran like a shrewd coyote"). And Dayle's narration is wry, ironic, and as keenly observant as the best stand-up. English matchsticks made in dangerous working conditions are described as "the kind that kept factory children from growing into factory teenagers," and the Union army "could do anything well but fight."

But How to Dodge a Cannonball never crosses the line into becoming glib. The dismissive attitude of the Union generals towards their Black soldiers is written with humorous panache, but the spite and prejudice at its root is taken seriously. At one point, Anders and Gleason give a general a crucial Confederate cipher that could turn the tide of the war—only for the general to burn it, because he doesn't believe such valuable information could possibly come from Black soldiers. And the humor drops away in occasional, powerful passages, most notably when Mole describes the mine collapse, caused by a spiteful enslaver, that led to his nickname.

It should be said that the novel does not follow the contours of history exactly. There is a bit of business involving a cult of monarchists, prevalent in New York City and with a small colony in the Nevada desert, that might throw readers for a loop. Certainly I had trouble knowing what to make of it at first. But as a hallucinatory desert interlude expands to take up the last third of the novel, it becomes clear what Dayle is doing. He's illustrating the dark, stupid heart of America, with all its pageantry and genuflection towards conservative ideals; shaking his head at those who think they can change it from within; and offering a moment of bloody catharsis before bleak reality sets in. 

This review first ran in the July 2, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.