Lucky for both it wasn’t a mortal wound, but the action sets the stage for the main storyline and one of the mysteries: why’d he do it?Ĭan we take a minute to talk about the glorious names McBride gave his characters? The story opens when Sportcoat inexplicably shoots Deems. At 19 Deems is now the main dealer doing business with his crew right out in front of the Cause. His pride and joy was a boy with a killer arm, Deems Clemens, but he turned into an unfulfilled promise. Sportcoat used to coach and referee the Cause’s baseball team – when they had one before the drugs moved in. Sometimes it’s a bottle Sportcoat borrowed from his job at the liquor store, other times it’s King Kong, the homemade white lightning made by Rufus, the janitor from the nearby Watch Houses. They hang out in the boiler room, talking and sipping. Sportcoat is good friends with Hot Sausage, the Cause’s janitor. They’re both gifted with plants and they tramp around the neighborhood together, hunting pokeweed, fiddlehead, and skunk cabbage in the vacant lots and on the shoreline. He holds down several odd jobs, his favorite being a gardener for the Elephant’s elderly mother.

Sportcoat may be half drunk most of the time but he’s a responsible fellow. Connections abound throughout this book and it’s fun to see how McBride ties them all together. The Elephant and Sportcoat’s lives are connected by more than just Hettie’s death. “Tommy” Elefante) who owns a trucking and storage company run out of a box car on the water. Her body was recovered by the Elephant (Thomas G. Hettie was a fine woman who met her end in the Hudson River in 1967. Hettie was the caretaker of the money and Sportcoat can’t find it, much to the dismay of the Five Points Baptist Church family. The talks mainly revolve around their church’s missing Christmas funds. He’s a kind man and a widower who has daily discussions with his late wife, Hettie. Deacon Cuffy Lambkin AKA Deacon King Kong AKA Sportcoat is the main character. If I were president I’d create a national book club and kick it off with this book.ĭeacon King Kong is set in 1969 Brooklyn, in The Causeway Housing projects. I’m certainly not the only one to recognize his greatness: former President Obama honored him with the 2015 National Humanities Medal for “humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America.” Agreed. McBride isn’t just a talented writer, he has a gift for bridging the humorous, the heartfelt, and the political in a single page. I savored his 2020 book Deacon King Kong over the last month or so, stretching out the pleasure by only reading it on my lunch breaks at work.

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