How to Dodge a Cannonball: A Novel

(Hardback)

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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.

Reviews

One of LitHub's "Most Anticipated Books of 2025"

"Grand dreams, inflated egos, and cruel twists of fate are often the stuff of great satires and this first novel by Dayle evokes such classic accounts of the human condition in conflict as Candide, Catch-22, and at least a couple of books by Evelyn Waugh. Historical burlesque as lively in invention as it is ingenious in execution."
--Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"This epic novel channels the absurdity of Catch-22 and the whimsical invention of The Intuitionist. It's a blast."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"This is not the typical Civil War novel, but the dark humor and commentary on race, class, and the American experiment in the midst of its biggest test make for an entertaining, thought-provoking read."
--Library Journal

"A heightened examination of America, this funny historical novel puts Dayle's comedic chops front and center."
--James Folta, LitHub

"Dennard Dayle's second book certifies his talent. I can't think of a wittier, more hilarious or more relevant young writer. How to Dodge a Cannonball is the great Civil War novel I didn't know I needed, but now it is never leaving my shelf."
--Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends and Super Sad True Love Story

"This is the Civil War send-up the American canon has been waiting for, and which today's America, still unsure which version of itself it wants to become, so sorely needs. Dayle is one of our sharpest, funniest, and most unrelenting writers."
--Jessi Jezewska Stevens, author of The Visitors and The Exhibition of Persephone Q

"A sharp and chaotic skewering of everything America believes about itself, told from the point of view of a young man bumbling his way through the horrors of the Civil War. Full of absurdity and humanity in equal measure, Dayle treats warfare with all the reverence and respect it deserves, which is none."
--Jason Pargin, New York Times bestselling author of I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom and If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe

"Dennard Dayle is an electrifying new voice, savagely funny and scarily smart."
--Susan Choi, author of Trust Exercise and My Education

"I realized what How to Dodge a Cannonball was trying to do a few chapters in, and I scoffed at Dennard Dayle's hubris. Everyone thinks they can write Catch-22 until they try to write Catch-22. It's like saying you want to fistfight the sun. I respect the audacity, I just don't think you can get up there. Here's the crazy thing: Dayle might have done it. How to Dodge a Cannonball is Catch-22 about the Civil War, complete with all the lighthearted racial commentary you're worried about. It's funny, fast, insightful, it has a weird amount of heart, and it's so dense with jokes you'll be re-reading it for years and still be catching new ones."
--Robert Brockway, author of Carrier Wave and The Empty Ones

Praise for Everything Abridged: Stories

"Dennard Dayle's 17 speculative tales, girdled by a Devil's Dictionary of 501 satiric definitions (literary, political, what-have-you), are by turns prescient of our anxious, conspiracy-fraught times and mournful of majestic worlds to come ruined by all too familiar hatreds. But the post-WWIII stand-up riffs Truly funny stuff."
Vulture

"Slyly defiant and blazingly imaginative, like the best modernist literature, Everything Abridged is a powerful celebration of flaw and failure. It's a book that revels in the timelessness of obsolescence and the freedom of powerlessness. Dayle's a genre-shattering writer, whose wit and intellect never cease to entertain. This refreshingly original and powerfully funnycollection is a debut to remember."
Paul Beatty, New York Times bestselling author of The Sellout

"Written as a dictionary, with hilarious and so-blunt-they're-sharp definitions of terms like 'LimeWire, ' 'mouse utopia, ' and 'Perry, Tyler, ' Dayle's debut collection of stories is as likely to stun as it is to inform. . . incredibly entertaining and so damn illuminating."
Entertainment Weekly

"With Everything Abridged, Dennard Dayle innovates form as much as he does content, creating a work that is funny and familiar, no matter if he's writing about comedians from Mars, battery-powered humans, or radicalized comic book writers. Combining wit, humor, and an uncanny ability to get to the heart of what can both plague and save us, Dayle is a writer who isn't ruffling feathers, but plucking the bird bare, and I am grateful as hell for it. Without a doubt one of the best collections I've ever read."
Mateo Askaripour, New York Times bestselling author of Black Buck

"Funnier and smarter than pretty much everything else you've read in your lifetime."
Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances and Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

Author Bio

Dennard Dayle is a Jamaican American author who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University and received his MFA from Columbia University. His short fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Clarkesworld, Matchbook, the Hard Times, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. His first book was the short story collection Everything Abridged. Before taking up fiction and mischief as a full-time job, he was an advertising copywriter who dangerously flirted with stand-up comedy. He teaches as an adjunct at Columbia and recently made the rash decision to take up skateboarding.