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Just Dave
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 13 2026
Pages: 222
Weight: 0.67
Height: 0.47 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Just Dave - a comedy novel about a man in small-town Colorado who becomes a local hero for something he almost certainly didn't do on purpose.
Dave Kessler, 41, walks into a convenience store for baking soda, trips on a rug he already knew was folded wrong, and accidentally sets off a chain of events that ends with an armed robber getting shot by his own partner. Blurry security footage makes it look like Dave heroically tackled the gunman. Nobody can prove otherwise - including Dave.
The town runs with it: free wings, a bike bought by his coworkers, a TV interview, a key to the city. Dave never quite corrects the story, partly because it's the first time in his life anyone's applauded him, and partly because he falls for his neighbor Ruth Anne and doesn't want to look like less of a man in front of her.
Then the man who actually got shot - Cody - shows up in town planning to blackmail Dave over the truth. Before he can, he falls (on the same kind of rug, no less), hits his head, and wakes up with total amnesia. Ruth Anne takes him in. Cody becomes lovable, funny, genuinely kind - and completely unaware he ever had a reason to hate Dave. Dave has to live next door to his own guilt, wearing a friendly face.
Eventually Cody's memory comes flooding back, he confronts Dave, and Dave finally tells the truth - to him, and eventually to everyone. What follows is a wildly escalating, mostly-abandoned scheme to fake Cody's death so he can start over with a clean record, undercut by real fate doing something stranger and darker on its own. Dave lies to a state trooper - his first deliberate lie for someone else's sake instead of his own - and Cody leaves town for a fresh start. Ruth Anne chooses to stay.
It ends with Dave and Ruth Anne together, a four-word postcard from Cody, and Dave finally content being exactly what the title says: just Dave.
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