Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction Winner of the Gotham Book PrizeOne of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year"Oprah's Book Club PickNamed one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and Time Magazine A Washington Post Notable Novel From the author of the National Book Award winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, comes one of the most celebrated novels of the year. In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award winning The Good Lord Bird.