DEACON KING KONG

One September day in 1969 at the Cause Houses, a housing project in South Brooklyn that has seen better days, a drunken 71-year-old church deacon known as Sportcoat walked up to Deems Clemens, the local baseball whiz kid-turned-drug dealer, pulled out a .45, and shot him at point-blank range.

But the facts tell only part of the story. What came before the shooting - lost money, a mysterious visitor from out of the neighborhood, a treasure nobody knew was hidden - and what happened after it to the men and women of the Cause Houses - most of them African-American, all of them struggling - is by turns unexpected, hilarious and poignant, and deeply human.

In DEACON KING KONG, James McBride explores the lives of the people touched by the shooting: the victim and his posse, the shooter, the witnesses, the cops, even the shooter's dead wife. As each of them tries to understand what happened and how to cope in the aftermath, it becomes clear that they are connected in unexpected ways and that they're harboring secrets of their own. From the crime scene at the Cause Houses to choir practice at Five Ends Baptist Church to a railroad boxcar down by the harbor, McBride tells his story with insight, wit and compassion, revealing how that what's hidden doesn't need to be kept hidden forever and that the way to grow is to face change without fear.

Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel that is every bit as enthralling as THE GOOD LORD BIRD and as emotionally honest as THE COLOR OF WATER. His explorations of human nature - the fear, love, and faith that live in all of us - make DEACON KING KONG a modern classic.

James McBride is an accomplished musician and the author of the National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird, the bestselling American classic The Color of Water, the novels Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, the story collection Five-Carat Soul, and Kill 'Em and Leave, a biography of James Brown. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal, McBride is also a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University.