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.

May 30, 2016
Beverly’s fiction debut is an atmospheric thriller, a crime novel of violence and murder, and an on-the-road experience. The book’s young antihero is a 15-year-old named East, who is standing at a crossroads to his future. His upward mobility through the ranks of his South Central L.A. gang, due primarily to his high-ranking uncle Fin, was halted when he allowed his feelings for a young murdered girl to interfere with his guardianship of a drug house. To reestablish his nephew’s credibility, Fin sends him with three other teen gangsters on a road trip from L.A. to kill a judge on vacation in Wisconsin. Actor Jackson tells Beverly’s granite-hard story in a smooth, almost gentle voice that underscores the pressures East is feeling on the trip. Something in that just-telling-it-like-it-is attitude highlights the boy’s sense of confusion and frustration, saddled with a job he doesn’t think he can do, traveling in unfamiliar surroundings, with boys he can’t control. Jackson has no trouble clarifying the members of East’s teammates on the hit. But his finest achievement is his presentation of East, a too-rapidly maturing boy, confused by his conflicting emotions, uncertain of what to do, how to do it, and where to go to seek advice. A Crown hardcover.