Patrick deWitt returns with Dodge City, a 1967 draft-dodging road novel
Patrick deWitt is back with Dodge City, his sixth book. It is a road novel, a story told through a journey, set in 1967 and centred on youth in the 1960s. The New York Times identifies it as his sixth, while The Guardian describes the 1960s road story.
DeWitt broke through with The Sisters Brothers, a western shortlisted for the Booker Prize, a major annual award for fiction, in 2011. He is also the author of The Librarianist. His own path to print was not academic. He dropped out of high school and has never been near an MFA programme, a university degree in creative writing.
The central character is Leland "Lee" Clarke. He is a dropout from UCLA, the University of California in Los Angeles. He was expelled for assaulting a fellow student.
Expulsion carries a sharp cost. Lee loses his draft deferment, a student exemption from military service. He receives a draft notice for service in Vietnam. He decides to dodge the draft by heading to Canada.
He sells his own car. He signs on with a drive-away service, a firm that pays drivers to deliver other people's cars, to deliver a brand-new Jaguar E-Type. The car gives him wheels for the escape.
He plots an L-shaped route from Los Angeles to New Jersey. It is a farewell tour. He plans to see his father in Concrete, his mother in Montana and his sister, a trainee nurse, in Manhattan.
Review coverage arrived just ahead of wider sale. The New York Times published its review on 26 September 2026. The Guardian followed on 1 October 2026. HarperCollins lists a Large Print edition, a large-type format often used by low-vision readers, with an on-sale date of 6 October 2026.
For readers keeping track, this means a quick sequence from review to shelf. The hardback conversation starts in late September. The large-type edition follows in early October. The story itself stays in 1967, with a young driver, a borrowed sports car and a long road north.
