Deacon King Kong

Deacon King Kong

James McBride

#225 of 8,085 books · #50 in Historical Fiction

Won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (2021) and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction (2021). Also shortlisted or longlisted for 1 other award.

Deacon King Kong won the National Book Award. In September 1969, a broken-down former church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffled into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in South Brooklyn, pulled out a .45, and in front of everybody shot the neighborhood drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this burst of violence and the consequences of it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's novel. McBride explores the lives of the people touched by the shooting: the victim, the neighbors who witnessed it, the cops assigned to investigate what happened, the members of the church where Sportcoat was deacon, and Sportcoat himself. It soon becomes clear that the lives of these characters overlap in unexpected ways, and as their stories unfold, McBride reveals that what's secret needn't be hidden forever, and that the way to grow is to face change without fear.