Deacon King Kong
James McBride's 2020 novel opens in the fall of 1969 when Sportcoat, a cantankerous, hard-drinking deacon at a Brooklyn church, walks into the plaza of the Cause Houses and shoots the project's young drug dealer in front of everyone. From that single act, McBride spins out a teeming, warmhearted comedy about the people of the neighborhood: the church ladies, the local cops, an Italian mobster, a buried treasure, and the ghosts of the past that haunt Sportcoat himself. Set against the backdrop of a changing New York, the book is funny, generous, and full of memorable voices, even as it touches on addiction, grief, and violence. McBride, who won acclaim for The Good Lord Bird, writes with deep affection for his characters and a gift for the rhythms of community life. The novel was widely praised for its humor and humanity.
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What you might want to know about Deacon King Kong
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
After a stumbling old church deacon shoots a drug dealer in a 1969 Brooklyn housing project, the lives of an entire neighborhood collide in unexpected ways.
It takes place in the fall of 1969 in and around the fictional Cause Houses, a public housing project in South Brooklyn, New York.
Both. McBride blends warm, often laugh-out-loud comedy with serious themes of addiction, grief, and violence in a richly populated community.
Deacon King Kong was written by James McBride, published in 2020 by Penguin Publishing Group.
Deacon King Kong is 384 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Deacon King Kong takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Deacon King Kong is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.