
Deacon King Kong
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Dominic Hoffman
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By:
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James McBride
About this listen
Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction
Winner of the Gotham Book Prize
One of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year"
Oprah's Book Club Pick
Named one of the Top 10 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 best-selling 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. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the White neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood's Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.
As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters - caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York - overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.
Bringing both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.
©2020 James McBride (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Deacon King Kong is deeply felt, beautifully written and profoundly humane; McBride’s ability to inhabit his characters’ foibled, all-too-human interiority helps transform a fine book into a great one.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“A hilarious, pitch-perfect comedy set in the Brooklyn projects of the late 1960s. This alone may qualify it as one of the year’s best novels. However, McBride...has constructed a story with a deeper meaning for those who choose to read beyond the plot, one that makes the work funnier, sweeter, and more profound.” (The Washington Post)
“The sheer volume of invention in Deacon King Kong - on the level of both character...and language - commands awe.... And the sentences! The prose radiates a kind of chain-reaction energy.” (The New Yorker)
"McBride’s hilarious dialogue and an attention to detail reveals a complex local history. Capturing humanity through satire and witticisms, McBride draws everyday heroes." (Time)
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The Color of Water
- A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Susan Denaker
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her 12 Black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother.
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Awesome
- By Michael on 05-30-17
By: James McBride
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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
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Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
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Song Yet Sung
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Leslie Uggams
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In the days before the Civil War, a runaway slave named Liz Spocott breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland’s eastern shore, setting loose a drama of violence and hope among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks.
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Spellbinding
- By Roberta on 11-05-09
By: James McBride
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Miracle at St. Anna
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Ted Daniel
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In Miracle at St. Anna, toward the end of World War II, four Buffalo Soldiers from the Army’s Negro 92nd Division find themselves separated from their unit and behind enemy lines. Risking their lives for a country in which they are treated with less respect than the enemy they are fighting, they discover humanity in the small Tuscan village of St. Anna di Stazzema—in the peasants who shelter them, in the unspoken affection of an orphaned child, in a newfound faith in fellow man. And even in the face of unspeakable tragedy, they—and we—learn to see the small miracles of life.
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Incredible…
- By Gerard J Williamsen on 04-12-25
By: James McBride
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Off Balance
- A Memoir
- By: Dominique Moceanu, Paul Williams, Teri Williams
- Narrated by: Dominique Moceanu
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In this searing and riveting New York Times best seller, Olympic gold medalist Dominique Moceanu reveals the dark underbelly of Olympic gymnastics, the true price of success…and the shocking secret about her past and her family that she only learned years later.
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Heartbreaking and inspiring
- By Leslie on 04-22-16
By: Dominique Moceanu, and others
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Ours
- A Novel
- By: Phillip B. Williams
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 22 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjurer who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there. She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours. It is in this miraculous place that Saint’s grand experiment—a truly secluded community where her people may flourish—takes root.
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So good
- By C. Mercer on 02-19-25
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Salvage the Bones
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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A hurricane is building, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's 14 and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.
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Good but I wish I hadn't read it.
- By Jeanie on 01-26-21
By: Jesmyn Ward
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The Sweetness of Water (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Nathan Harris
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. Equal parts beauty and terror, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.
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Masterful storytelling and an exceptional audio performance
- By Pamela on 06-18-21
By: Nathan Harris
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Let the Great World Spin
- A Novel
- By: Colum McCann
- Narrated by: Richard Poe, Gerard Doyle, Carol Monda, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.
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Wish I'd chosen the book, rather than audio.
- By narrowback slacker on 02-23-17
By: Colum McCann
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The Vanishing Half
- A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
- By: Brit Bennett
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: Their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for White, and her White husband knows nothing of her past.
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Soap opera material
- By Sheila S on 06-06-20
By: Brit Bennett
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The Water Dancer (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
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We Must Always Remember
- By Cammie on 09-28-19
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Black Bottom Saints
- A Novel
- By: Alice Randall
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Imani Parks
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Great Depression through the post-World War II years, Joseph “Ziggy” Johnson has been the pulse of Detroit’s famous Black Bottom. A celebrated gossip columnist for the city’s African-American newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle, he is also the emcee of one of the hottest night clubs, where he’s rubbed elbows with the legendary black artists of the era, including Ethel Waters, Billy Eckstein, and Count Basie. Ziggy is also the founder and dean of the Ziggy Johnson School of Theater. But now the doyen of Black Bottom is ready to hang up his many dapper hats.
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Interesting Read. Too Much In Common with Today
- By rderr on 12-14-20
By: Alice Randall
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American Spy
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young Black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes.
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A Spy Novel for Black folk.
- By AJ Walker on 10-07-19
By: Lauren Wilkinson
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Here Is New York
- By: E. B. White
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 1 hr and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, E. B. White's stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America's foremost literary figures. The New York Times named Here Is New York one of the 10 best books ever written about the metropolis, and The New Yorker called it "the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city".
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Old New York
- By Joseph Paul Gouverneur on 07-24-16
By: E. B. White
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Sharks in the Time of Saviors
- By: Kawai Strong Washburn
- Narrated by: Jolene Kim, Kaleo Griffith, G. K. Bowes, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods - a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities.
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Glad This Was Free
- By Shad Huddleston on 04-01-20
What listeners say about Deacon King Kong
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- Stephanie
- 02-11-21
Great story, great performance. Period.
Wonderful story with fun characters and the narrator nailed the different voices. Well done all around!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Loretta G. Frasier
- 07-23-20
Narration & Story are Excellent
I had to read this for my Book Club & may not have selected it on my own volition. I am so glad I opted to listen to this one. The characters are richly drawn and the narration truly brings them to life. There are times when it is laugh-out-loud funny despite the somewhat dark story. This is a great listen at this time in the US, but is not as "in your face" as some others many of us are reading in the midst of current racial equality conversations. You'll learn something while being highly entertained.
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1 person found this helpful
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- R. Severe
- 09-18-20
J. McBride does it again
I really enjoyed James McBride memoir "the color of water" when I read it years ago. He did not fail with this novel. The author has an uncanny manner for drawing you into the story and painting several gorgeous pictures as though you are there with the characters. Sport coat was such a rife character whom you would not expect to love. I mean as a New Yorker it made me rethink of the "winos" you see walking around and all the stories they may have and are running from in their addiction to alcohol. The book forces me to rethink the sociological differences of the "New Negro" young African American children who started selling dope as opposed to simply playing the doting role of compliant boy which is what the new negro thought the old man did in order to live up to the "White man's" expectation. I do not want to give to much away but toward the end I shed tears after becoming so vested.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mike Stevens
- 01-07-21
Great book, weak ending.
Excellent story about real struggles with inner city urban issues. Wonderfully told but I suspect the author ran out of steam on how to conclude the book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mary
- 08-01-20
Entertaining
The story was best enjoyed in audible form as it added clarity and relatability to the characters and story. I recommend this for book for entertainment only.
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- Olivia Sewell
- 10-09-20
Good Read
Interesting story and characters. A little baffled by ending. Where is the Christmas fund money or did I miss it?
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- Ignatius
- 05-22-20
Heart, soul, fun
Wow. James McBride is a wizard. Here is a complex story about simple people, until we learn how the people aren't so simple after all. What a warm and wonderful tale about a moment in history that carries so much relevance today. Spectacular performance by the reader, too. Highly recommended.
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- Charles Singer
- 03-29-20
Stick with this one
Just a great story on all levels. Maybe a littler formula. But you won’t notice that until your finished.
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- risa
- 02-21-21
The whole package
Thoroughly enjoyed this book and performance. As a New Yorker I could picture so much in my minds eye. Loved this book and am looking forward to reading more James McBride.
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- Lisa S.
- 05-18-21
Great book - Even better performance
Not exactly what I was expecting, but this was a great find. The narration made this book come alive! Very entertaining!
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