'Deacon King Kong,' unlike a lot of conversations people are having about race or politics right now, it asks the reader to see all its characters with nuance and grace. It's a book that, in some ways, seems totally at odds with the reality we are all living through now, with coronavirus lockdowns and several weeks of protest and racial tension. SANDERS: And find a way forward together, with each other. MCBRIDE: And as they deal with this issue, you see these different worlds coming together and how they come to know each other, to like each other, to tolerate each other, to respect each other and to even dislike each other. In the book, everyone bumps up against each other, over and over and over again. SANDERS: From one botched shooting, a wave of activity comes to involve people of all races and backgrounds living in and around the Cause House projects, and it comes to include Puerto Rican neighbors and immigrants and Italian mobsters and Jewish shop owners and Irish police and on and on and on. That shooting sets off - it's like dropping a rock in a pond. 38, walks up to the most dreadful drug dealer in the neighborhood and shoots him. JAMES MCBRIDE: 'Deacon King Kong' is essentially a book about a deacon from a small Baptist church in the southwest corner of Brooklyn who gets drunk one morning, pulls out his old, ancient. James McBride, in his newest novel 'Deacon King Kong,' he asks us to look back to September of 1969 and a housing project in south Brooklyn for lessons.

SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: 2020 is one of those years that makes you look to history for any kind of comparison that could make sense of all this. NPR's Sam Sanders reports, in spite of that, 'Deacon King Kong' has a lot to say about how America gets through 2020 and all the challenges this year holds. It's called 'Deacon King Kong.' The entire novel is set in New York in the late 1960s. The bestselling author James McBride has a new book out this year.

James mcbride deacon king kong