Dodgers is a road trip novel, a coming-of-age novel, a crime novel--and more. Bill Beverly's debut, about four black kids from Compton confronting white Middle America for the first time, is as durable and expansive as the early-winter trees 15-year-old East notices along the Iowa-Wisconsin border: "Trees unlike the trees in L.A: these rooted hard, grew up tall, muscular, their bare limbs grabbing all the air in the world."
The gang is on a "just business" mission for their top dog, Fin. In the middle bench rides East, Fin's loosely related nephew, who has risen from drug house lookout to running a crew of younger kids. East's younger brother, Ty, takes the back seat, thumbing his video game, and at the wheel is the oldest, fast-talker Michael Wilson. Sitting shotgun, fat Walter is Fin's fixer and problem solver.
And so they set out, without cellphones or connection to their drug 'hood known as the Boxes, and make their way through the mountains and the plains. But things go south. Their van gets vandalized by kids out trashing for fun. Always on edge, brothers Ty and East get crossways over stealing a different car to get home. Walter puzzles out a way to score himself a plane ticket out of Des Moines. Alone, East makes his way farther east to a small town in Ohio, where, exhausted with running, he settles into a job at a paintball range.
With the savvy of a much more prolific writer, Beverly plants a powerful conclusion on a powerful first novel. Dodgers is brilliant with no more than it needs--and no less. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.