Dodgers

Starred review from February 8, 2016
Beverly (On the Lam: Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover’s America) makes his fiction debut with a dazzling crime novel that’s equal parts coming-of-age tale à la Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and travelogue à la Kerouac. East, a 15-year old gang member from South L.A., sets out for Wisconsin with three other teenage boys at the behest of his uncle, on a mission to kill a key witness in an upcoming trial. Along for the ride is East’s brother, Ty, an emotionless killer at 13. The revelations experienced by the young men as they drive cross-country through America’s heartland are life changing, and in some cases, life ending. The narrative is simultaneously coldhearted and lyrical. For example, the dark, abandoned houses in a neighborhood known as the Boxes are described as “a row of loose teeth,” and planes flash “like blades” in the morning sky. Readers won’t soon forget East and his bloody journey of self-discovery and, ultimately, salvation. Agent: Alia Hanna Habib, McCormick & Williams.

February 1, 2016
Four street kids from Los Angeles discover that America is weirder, and bigger, than they imagined. It's tempting to call Beverly's debut a coming-of-age novel; its protagonist, a boy known only as East, is 16. Yet East has come of age long before the action starts: a lookout at a Los Angeles drug house, he is experienced beyond his years. "He was no fun," Beverly writes, "and they respected him, for though he was young, he had none in him of what they hated most in themselves: their childishness. He had never been a child." That's one of the charms and also one of the issues with the novel, which opens with a police shootout at the house East has been paid to protect. In the aftermath, he's sent, with three other young men (one of them his brother), on a looping road trip to Wisconsin, where a troublesome witness must be killed. The title refers to the LA Dodgers gear the four put on as camouflage, a strategy to fit in, or at least pass beneath the radar of, an America they do not understand. Beverly is best tracing this elusive strangeness, the way common landscapes--truck stops, gas stations, interstates--can be alien, even dangerous: "Here the ground was nearly empty of buildings and the mountains were like people, huddled figures, blue and gray and white, so high." Still, as the novel progresses, it begins to lose its path. Partly, it's that the drama peaks too early, but even more, that East comes to us so fully formed there's no room for him to grow. Yes, he faces challenges and makes decisions. Yes, he adapts to circumstance. Ultimately, however, he does not develop throughout the book so much as remain consistent--the reason, of course, is that he's so highly valued as a lookout, yet it's problematic when it comes to his arc as a character. An interesting debut that doesn't quite live up to its promise.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from April 15, 2016

With characterizations recalling the best of George Pelecanos, this debut novel by Beverly (American literature, Trinity Univ.; On the Lam: Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover's America) follows the coming-of-age story of East, a young Los Angeles gang lookout who is sent on a road trip with three others to kill a witness in Wisconsin. This is not the usual road trip narrative; each of the four young men could easily carry their own book, but East, a smart and sympathetic narrator, propels the story with his internal assessments of his cohorts and their situation. An unexpected turn in the latter third of the novel brings the focus more squarely on East, who has never been out of L.A. and begins to examine the possibilities that are available to him beyond his urban life as well as the reality of being a young black man in a predominantly white Midwest America. VERDICT Fans of HBO's The Wire and Richard Price novels will be engaged by the book's themes of race, identity, and the U.S. class system.--Julie Elliott, Indiana Univ. Lib., South Bend

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2016

Working for one of his uncle's drug houses in South Central L.A., East takes his 12-hour shifts of watching the street and managing the drug users with a level of seriousness and perspicacity that would make him the envy of any fresh MBA. When the cops raid and begin to unravel the organization with arrests, East's house shuts down. Instead of receiving a bullet to the brain as he's expecting, 15-year-old East is sent by his uncle beyond the neighborhood he's always known to the wilds of Wisconsin as one of an unlikely team of urban boy soldiers on a mission to take out a judge who poses a danger to boss Fin. The characterizations of East and those who accompany him are masterly. Beverly presents an unflinching third-person glimpse through the jaded eyes of East at college wheeler-dealer Michael, physically flabby but mentally sharp Walter, and Ty, East's younger and frighteningly volatile trigger man and half brother. The protagonist has seen so much darkness and crime that the naivete he conveys is miraculous. This man-boy from the mean streets is still able to experience watershed moments that open his eyes to a world and people beyond his ken and his kin. His rites of passage are atypical compared with many other antiheroes; in some ways, he washes clean rather than becoming dirtied by the world at large. VERDICT At once gritty and literary, this novel is sure to please YA readers, who, like East, know-or seek to know-more about life than is sometimes comfortable.-Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Gwinnett County, GA

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2016
In this stunning crime-fiction debut, East, a 15-year-old gang member in L.A., loses his job after police raid the drug house where he's standing guard. Offered a chance at redemption, he joins a crew driving cross-country to Wisconsin to kill a witness in a case against his boss. With him are Michael Wilson, a 20-year-old smooth talker; Walter, an overweight 17-year-old problem-solver; and East's own brother, Ty, an unknowable 13-year-old killer. East has never been out of L.A. and the journey is transformative, forcing him to confront problems inside and outside the van while figuring out who he is and why he was ultimately sent along. The premise and execution are terrific, and the prose is remarkable: Beverly does more with a sentence than many writers accomplish in a paragraph. East and his compatriots are old before their time, and yet we never lose the sense that they are still growing up, even if their growing-up is like that of soldiers dropped behind enemy lines in their first war. They are black, and the highway they travel is very white indeed. Highly recommended for fans of Richard Price, this is a searing novel about crime, race, and coming-of-age, with characters who live, breathe, and bleed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)