From the winner of a National Book Award and author of the bestselling memoir,The Color of Water, and The Good Lord Bird, a TV series starring Ethan Hawke
The year is 1969. In a housing project in south Brooklyn, a shambling old church deacon called Sportcoat shoots - for no apparent reason - the local drug-dealer who used to be part of the church's baseball team. The repercussions of that moment draw in the whole community, from Sportcoat's best friend - Hot Sausage - to the local Italian mobsters, the police (corrupt and otherwise), and the stalwart ladies of the Five Ends Baptist Church.
Deacon King Kong is a book about a community under threat, about the ways people pull together in an age when the old rules are being rewritten. It is very funny in places, and heartbreaking in others. From a prize-winning storyteller, this New York Times bestseller shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, and that the communities we build are fragile but vital.
About the Author
James McBride is the author of the award-winning New York Times bestsellers, The Color of Water and The Good Lord Bird, which is currently being made into a television series starring Ethan Hawke. A former reporter for The Washington Post and People magazine, McBride holds a Masters degree in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. from Oberlin College. In 2015 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama.
Industry Reviews
The sheer volume of invention in Deacon King Kong commands awe...And the sentences! The prose radiates a kind of chain-reaction energy.
* NEW YORKER *
'Deacon King Kong is full of heart, humor, and compassion...I say we give him another National Book Award for this one. It's that good.'
* NPR *
'Deacon King Kong reaffirms James McBride's position among the greatest American storytellers of our time.'
* BOOKPAGE *
Hilarious...A rich and vivid multicultural history.
* TIME *
'Perhaps you wouldn't expect your next great read to be a sort of comic opera set in a Brooklyn housing project circa 1969 starring a drink-addled church deacon named Sportcoat, his best friend Hot Sausage and a melancholic amateur gardener with mafia ties known as the Elephant. Best put on your seat belt, because McBride (The Good Lord Bird, Five-Carat Soul) will take you on a fast, funny, farcical ride.
* WASHINGTON POST *
McBride is operating in the realm of social allegory, a lineage that extends back through generations of writers: Ralph Ellison, Terry Southern, Darius James. Like them, he telegraphs his intentions through the use - or better yet, the reinvention - of history, which as Deacon King Kong progresses becomes a kind of floating opera, touching but not always overlapping with events as they occurred.
* LA TIMES *
