For many U.S. draftees in the Vietnam War era, the question of whether to serve one's country or relocate to Canada was difficult to confront; it also forced them to address buried complexities in the lives they would leave behind. Such is the case with Lee Clarke, the protagonist of the wittily titled Dodge City, Patrick deWitt's fast-paced, dialogue-heavy story about a young slacker unsure of everything except for one important fact: he has no intention of serving in the war.
Lee lives in Los Angeles in a "second-floor apartment resting on stilts" by the water, with "the minor scents of slow-baking dumpster trash" wafting in through the window. He came to California to study land surveying at UCLA, but his main motivation was to escape "the permanent gray ceiling of Washington state," where he was born and raised. For the past two years, he's been off-and-on dating Cal, the frequently stoned daughter of East Coast intellectuals. All goes well enough, until Cal invites him to a campus party at which he gets into a fight and drops his opponent with one punch to the teeth. Unluckily for Lee, that opponent's parents are "esteemed benefactors," so the college expels Lee, and he loses his draft deferment.
Worse luck comes when he receives his draft notice and has to report for his physical in two weeks. Lee decides to escape to Canada instead. He accepts a gig with a drive-away car delivery company to bring a brand-new Jaguar E-Type to a guy in New Jersey. With only his suitcase and an ample supply of "driving pills"--Benzedrine--from his pal Robin, Lee sets out, but he doesn't take a direct route. He follows a circuitous path to visit people from his past, including his father, living alone in Washington State and eking out a living as a dogcatcher; his mother, who ditched the family and moved to Montana when Lee was in high school because, she says, "I could no longer pretend I wasn't unhappy" with her marriage; and his sister, Grace, a Manhattan nurse-in-training in an affair with a married doctor.
DeWitt (French Exit) expounds on themes of self-preservation and escape as each character addresses consequential decisions and their repercussions. "We're defined by our behaviors, by the choices we make," a character tells Lee, a lesson he learns with painful clarity in this deceptively light work. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer
Shelf Talker: Patrick deWitt's Dodge City is a deceptively light Vietnam War-era novel about a young man in Los Angeles who drives across the country to escape to Canada after receiving his draft notice.