How to Dodge a Cannonball
Anders joins the Union Army as a flag twirler to escape his abusive mother but finds that that sort of career gets you killed. He deserts for the Confederate army, nearly gets killed again, and deserts back to the Union, this time joining an all-Black regiment by claiming to be an octoroon. The result is a mad march through a kind of alternate history of the Civil War in which the ultimate outcome is the same but there are some previously unrecorded stops along the way.
Anders can translate code in his head, but the reasons that most people do things perplex him, as do the actual motivations driving the war. His epic journey brings him a kind of found family that includes Gleason, a political dreamer and playwright, and Petey, a bugler with numerous personas. There is danger not only on the battlefield but in the fact that the Black soldiers are considered prey by the Confederate troops and expendable by the Union. An arms dealer whose shifting loyalties depend on who has money stands for the war itself.
The well-researched period details are occasionally juxtaposed with startling digressions, but the few anachronisms do not matter and are clearly intentional. This is not history as fact but history as fable. How To Dodge a Cannonball is satire at its funniest and most pointed, skewering good intentions and bad with equal ferocity.
The use of certain period-appropriate language, deeply offensive in a modern context, warrants a trigger warning. There are numerous instances of the word generally given as n—. I found that true both to the period and to the spirit of the book, but go cautiously if that usage will disturb you.
