How to Dodge a Cannonball
Dennard Dayle's How to Dodge a Cannonball is a satirical Civil War novel that opens with sixteen year old Anders standing on a battlefield, twirling a flag for whichever side seems likely to keep him alive that morning. Anders has lost track of how many times he has switched between Union and Confederate uniforms, and his only consistent loyalty is to his own unimpressive survival. Through a mix of bureaucratic accident, geographic luck, and outright cowardice, Anders ends up attached to the First Kansas Colored Infantry, a real life unit of formerly enslaved soldiers, where his obvious whiteness and obvious uselessness are equally inconvenient. Dayle, a former writer for The Onion and Adult Swim, brings the comic irreverence of those rooms to a serious historical canvas, treating the Civil War as the first instance of the American hustle to reposition oneself on the right side of history without actually doing anything heroic. The novel mixes pulpy adventure, sharp racial satire, and an occasional flash of real tenderness.
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A teenage drummer boy spends the Civil War switching uniforms, armies, and political convictions whenever the wind changes. A satirical romp through the war and the country it produced.
How to Dodge a Cannonball was written by Dennard Dayle and published in 2024. It is his debut novel, a Civil War-era picaresque blending historical fiction and dark satire.
Yes. How to Dodge a Cannonball is dark comedy, often compared to Catch-22 and Mark Twain's later satires. The protagonist drifts between Union and Confederate sides, with absurd consequences.
How to Dodge a Cannonball is 336 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, How to Dodge a Cannonball takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
How to Dodge a Cannonball is a standalone novel by Dennard Dayle, not part of a series.
How to Dodge a Cannonball is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
