‘I adored every page’ MAX PORTER
‘Funny, warm-hearted and beautifully written’
THE TIMES
‘A rollicking, wise superb novel’
INDEPENDENT
From the Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers comes Dodge City, a thrilling novel about a young man on an amphetamine-fuelled cross-country road trip fleeing the Vietnam draft.
1967, California. Lee Clarke is a strait-laced twenty-three-year-old, happily in love and ambling along at college until an ill-advised fistfight leads to his expulsion. Soon, he receives his draft notice to serve in the Vietnam War, which forces Lee to make the first political decision of his life: he will leave the country and his girlfriend and head for the Canadian border.
He signs up at a drive-away car delivery service, chancing into a new Jaguar bound for the East Coast. Carrying only a single suitcase and a bag of amphetamines, Lee knows he can’t go without saying his goodbyes.
In four different towns strung out along the US, Lee visits each member of his family: his father, an alcoholic World War Two veteran; his mother, engaged in a buoyantly manic performance with her shut-in sibling; his heartbroken, misanthropic brother Harry; and finally his twin sister, Grace, a brash, young psychiatric nurse-in-training mired in romantic drama. As Lee makes his stimulated progress across the country, his past keeps rising to meet him. He can’t help but wonder, what will his decision to leave mean for his future?
A beautiful, sweeping and raucous portrait of a family in disarray and a country in flux, Dodge City confirms deWitt as one of our most brilliant satirists and a novelist of staggering heart.
A TIMES MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026
‘Electric, funny, and brilliantly written’ JOHN PATRICK McHUGH, author of Fun and Games
‘A witty, heartfelt ride. Dodge City is a supreme delight’ JAMI ATTENBERG, author of All This Could Be Yours
About the Author :
Patrick deWitt is the author of six novels including The Sisters Brothers, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Governor General Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2011. Born in British Columbia, Canada, he now resides in Portland, Oregon.
Review :
‘Funny, warm-hearted and beautifully written; we can imagine the Coen brothers immediately turning it into a movie’ The Times
‘The writing is gorgeous and the novel shines with sharp and cutting descriptions … Dodge City is a rollicking, wise, superb novel – and one that offers a warning about drinking the “mythic American tonic”’ Independent
‘All Patrick deWitt’s books are exquisite company, but Dodge City feels like an especially fine and honourable acquaintance to have made. I adored every page of this wise, funny, charming novel’ Max Porter, author of Shy
‘Electric, funny, and brilliantly written: Dodge City is a road trip I wanted to stay on with a cast of characters I wanted to live with for many, many, many more pages’ John Patrick McHugh, author of Fun and Games
‘I was hooked from the first page of Dodge City. Witty, moving, frustrating, rousing, strange, I loved it. I want everyone I know to read it so I have people to talk about it with’ Lou Stoppard, author of Exteriors
‘A witty, heartfelt ride. Dodge City is a supreme delight’ Jami Attenberg, author of All This Could Be Yours
‘A perfect novel … on the knife’s edge of hilarity and tenderness’ Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel
‘Thrilling, moving’ Irish Times
‘Blessed with deWitt's lively, clipped, and surprising dialogue … [A] hero's journey that interrogates the very meaning of life’ Booklist
‘A lively on-the-road novel with lighthearted – and existential – moments’ Kirkus Reviews
‘Keenly observed and wryly humorous … DeWitt's elegiac novel is good company for dark days’ Publishers Weekly
