The novel’s setting, Five Ends Baptist Church, acts as a magnet for the plot and characters as well. The novel’s deepest moments come when characters like Sportcoat and Clemens reflect on their decisions and make changes to their lives - especially when the former’s mentor relationship to the latter hangs by a mere thread after the confusion of the shooting. Cycles of violence and survival in low income areas, like the Causeway projects, highlight our need for kindness and guidance to make good choices in tough circumstances. Much of Deacon King Kong’s plot touches on this era’s racial and class issues, which parallel many of the current events of the past few years. During this time, new and previously marginalized generations found their footing beyond the traditional confines of their predecessors. There is no coincidence in McBride’s setting of the story in the 1960s, a time of counterculture and redefining the American Dream. Even the neighborhood’s drug kingpins, mobsters, police, and Clemens himself voice their reasons for the shooting, as its repercussions reverberate through the subsequent weeks, bringing several conflicts, internal and external, to light. As the alcoholic deacon of the community’s Five Ends Baptist Church, Sportcoat’s motivations for shooting drug dealer Deems Clemens are widely speculated by African-American and Hispanic residents, ranging from a drunken accident to an act of God.

The protagonist and catalyst for the novel’s events, Sportcoat, is the flaming arrow who ties the lives of the characters together. It chronicles the lives of this community after the shooting of a major drug dealer in broad daylight. The novel takes place in 1960s New York, in an area of the projects known as Causeway in southern Brooklyn.

McBride’s follow up to his National Book Award winning The Good Lord Bird draws on the same wit and humor as the author observes and records the human condition. The juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy has never been as eloquent as in James McBride’s latest novel, Deacon King Kong. Deacon King Kong by James McBride (Riverhead Books 2020)ĭuring such turbulent times, it is important to have a sense of humor.

Deacon king kong by james mcbride