"How to Dodge a Cannonball" is a 2025 novel by Jamaican-American writer Dennard Dayle, and is a black comedy set in the Civil War. It follows the wartime career of Anders, a teenage flag twirler that pretends to be black as he fights in an all-black regiment, and as he gets swept up not just in the war, but in a series of tangentially related conspiracies.
Several comparisons have been made to Catch-22, and Slaughterhouse Five is another obvious comparison. I myself was reminded of Candide, as our hapless and innocent protagonist is swept from one adventure to another. And since this is a book by a black writer writing in 2025, despite the Civil War setting, there are actually topical allusions to current events, with the Civil War era being mostly a backdrop. In fact, while the beginning of the book focuses on the typical blood and mud suffering common to Civil War narratives, the book is not merely a pastiche of what we all know from Ken Burns documentaries, but takes a more speculative and fanciful tone, with hidden kingdoms and secret agents and science-fiction plays told from a 19th century perspective.
Dennard Dayle can be a very terse and oblique writer, and certain plot points and references sailed over my head. Some of the hints about what is going on (such as a Polly Oliver situation), as well as the political or social parallels to current events, would probably be more apparent on a second reread. I don't know if this book will quite be our generation's Catch-22, but it is a good debut (this is Dayle's first novel, although he did previously publish a short story collection with several novellas) from a talented writer.