Hettie walked into the harbor and died two years ago. Its oldest member, 106 year old Sister John, hasn’t been to the church in years, but tithes $4.13 a week, sending it faithfully from the “old folks home” where she settled. Sportcoat is a Deacon in the church Hettie helped to found, “Five Ends,” right by the edge of their complex and the center of life for a diminishing congregation. Hettie, a churchwoman, kept their little family going, including their “son” Pudgy Fingers. Four Pies, an Italian woman who had just baked four pies the day he started gardening for her. That one was for a woman Sportcoat called Mrs. When he joined her at the “Cause” Housing Projects, he took to heavily drinking homemade moonshine called King Kong and worked odd menial odd jobs, only one related to gardening. She imagined him using his green thumb to grow moonflowers and work with the earth, but Sportcoat transplanted to Brooklyn was a disappointment to her, though they loved each other. He grew up in South Carolina, falling in love with Hettie, who moved north to New York City as a young woman, with plans Sportcoat would join her. He’s a 79 year old man called “Sportcoat.” As a child, he was “cursed” with illnesses and one of the many healers his mother used, after casting her spells, told his mother not to call him by his given name for a period of time. There are numerous players, but one dominates. Because, while its subjects are a small black church, a sprawling public housing complex, an old neighborhood of deteriorating brownstones once occupied by only Italians, organized crime actors playing big time to small time roles, the New York Harbor, New York public servants in general and the police in particular, the individual people form the bricks and mortar of Deacon King Kong.
It is McBride’s meticulous attention to the humanity, humor, danger, ambivalence and values (good and bad) of every single character that fills Deacon King Kong with heart and humor. Deacon King Kong is a funny, tragic, sweet, ugly, pulls no punches but finds good in the world around every corner book.
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