Dodge City

Set in Southern California in the mid-1960s, the novel follows Lee Clarke, a young man whose life unravels after he receives a draft notice for the Vietnam War. Lee lives in a second-floor apartment near the ocean. One morning, a letter from the Selective Service arrives informing him he must report for a physical examination in two weeks. The notice is premature: Lee was expelled from UCLA after punching another student, and his draft officer, Mr. Dewey, warned that his student deferment would be lifted but gave him twelve weeks to re-enroll. Only six weeks have passed.

The expulsion stemmed from a party near campus where a charismatic blond ringleader mocked Lee's small-town origins in Concrete, Washington. Lee left but later followed the blond onto the dark campus and punched him without a word. The dean expelled Lee the next day, explaining that the blond's parents were esteemed benefactors.

Lee's relationship with Cal, his girlfriend of two years, is complicated. Cal, the daughter of East Coast intellectuals, broadened Lee's cultural horizons while appreciating his earnest, unironic nature. Her friends are druggy and nihilistic, and Cal sometimes disappears with them overnight. They agree to monogamy, but Cal resists any discussion of the future.

When Lee tells Cal about the draft notice, she insists it must be a mistake. Lee visits Mr. Dewey at the induction center, where Mr. Dewey confirms he found nothing to explain the shortened deferment. Re-enrolling at a community college is too late. Marriage is too late. Lee will see combat. Leaving in a daze, Lee drops his new sport coat into a trash can.

Outside, Lee finds his friend Robin, an easygoing former dramaturgy student living in his van, who has also been drafted. Lee decides to sell Robin his Ford for five hundred dollars and flee the country. Robin suggests a driveaway job, delivering someone else's car cross-country rather than taking a bus or plane, and identifies a brand-new Jaguar E-Type bound for New Jersey.

Lee spends his last day dismantling his life. He quits his job, collects his wages, and picks up the Jaguar from the Four Winds Driveaway Company. Robin returns with the five hundred dollars and a bag of white cross amphetamines for driving. That evening, Lee finds a note from Cal bubble-gummed to his door: She cannot do the big goodbye, loves him "basically," and asks him to call from the road. Lee takes a white cross and drives north.

Fueled by amphetamines, Lee drives all night up the California coast, experiencing surges of exhilaration and despair. He sleeps in Mendocino, then drives into a violent storm through the redwood forest. When a fallen redwood blocks the road, he finds a gap just large enough for the low-slung Jaguar to pass beneath.

Lee arrives in Concrete to find the town shabby and half-shuttered. His father is now the town's dogcatcher, sleeping in his van, his hands bandaged and trembling, the house overrun with dogs. Over breakfast at a diner, Lee tells his father about the draft notice. His father, a World War II volunteer, argues that military service is part of the male American experience and that leaving will cost Lee a piece of himself. Before departing, stung by sadness and anger, Lee opens the front door and lets all the dogs run free.

Lee drives through the Cascades and Rockies to Billings, Montana, where his mother lives with her brother Wallace. Over dinner, Uncle Wallace draws a parallel between Lee's flight from the draft and his mother's flight from her marriage: Both reached a boundary they could not accept. Lee's mother recounts her departure from Washington, a journey of small cruelties redeemed by one kindness, a blind woman fanning her dog on a bus, that restored her faith in what she calls "resistless power," her word for destiny. Wallace then reveals that their father, celebrated as a war hero, came home from Europe violent and abusive, regularly beating Wallace as a child. Lee's mother is stricken and leaves the room but returns for dessert.

The novel pauses to explain Lee's antipathy toward his brother Harry. In eleventh grade, Lee became quietly fascinated with Marinka Kabulka, a gaunt Hungarian girl orphaned by Communist death squads and relocated to Concrete. Lee never spoke to her but studied her constantly. That summer, Harry, Lee's older brother, charmed Marinka at the river and spent a month with her before her guardians forced her to leave town. She left a farewell letter for Harry, but Lee opened it, found a pencil drawing of wildflowers he understood as a declaration of love, and dropped the letter through a sewer grate. He has not spoken to Harry since.

Despite this history, Lee visits Harry in Duluth. Harry is devastated because his fiancée Sally caught him cheating and left. Over beers, the brothers fall into combative rhythms, but the acrimony feels performative. Lee raises the subject of Marinka; Harry argues she hated Concrete and likely ended up better off. Lee senses forgiveness will come. Harry reveals his secret hobby of making bomb threats to public buildings, and Lee warns him he will go to prison. They part on better terms than they have been on in years.

Lee drives to Columbus, Ohio, and calls Cal's apartment. Robin answers, having broken in and camped out. Robin confesses that he and Cal slept together shortly after Lee left, but Cal became distant and is now seeing someone else. Robin relays Cal's cryptic description of her new boyfriend: "You already know his name. And you know he's not a motherfucker." Lee drives through the night to New York, where his sister Grace has been fired from the hospital where she trained as a nurse. She takes Lee to a bar where a draft resistance organizer urges him to stay and fight the system. Lee is unpersuaded.

Lee drives to the border at Buffalo, where a border agent finds the draft notice and denies him entry. He traces the border into Vermont. His mother, reached by phone, tells him she has made peace with his choice. Rain reminds Lee of a defining time with Cal: She came to him pregnant, had an abortion without discussion, and Lee cared for her through recovery. Recalling Robin's clue about Cal's new boyfriend, Lee realizes Cal may be at his own apartment and dials the number. Cal has been staying there nearly a week, hoping he might call. He tells her he will get to Canada, find a job, and send her a plane ticket. She asks whether the ticket is one-way or round-trip; he says it is up to her, and she corrects him that it should be up to both of them. The operator disconnects them when Lee runs out of coins.

Lee asks the waitress about the border. She points across the highway at a line of trees. Lee leaves the Jaguar's keys and a note on the dashboard, crosses the highway on foot, climbs a split rail fence, walks across a muddy field, and enters the woods. He emerges in Canada and walks until he finds a bowling alley, where Canadian newspapers and a portrait of the Queen of England confirm his arrival. He bowls with smaller balls and five pins instead of ten, releasing the ball down the lane, "waiting with no small interest to see how intention stood up against resistless power" (248). A brief coda notes that Lee will find his way to Montreal and begin looking for a job and a place to live.