But before you do that, the book is set in 1969 in a housing project in Brooklyn. GROSS: I want you to read the opening of the book. It is a pleasure to have you on the show. TERRY GROSS: James McBride, welcome to FRESH AIR. The action begins when the 71-year-old church deacon, who lives in the projects, shoots the young man who's become the project's main drug dealer, and no one understands why. It's a character study of a community where hard drugs are starting to move in. It takes place in 1969 in a Brooklyn housing project similar to the one McBride grew up in. McBride's latest novel, "Deacon King Kong," is now out in paperback. Anna," about a Black soldier in Italy during World War II. Spike Lee adapted McBride's World War II novel, "Miracle At St. It won the 2013 National Book Award for fiction and was adapted into a series starring Ethan Hawke. McBride's novel "The Good Lord Bird," set just before the Civil War, is about a young boy who joins John Brown's abolitionist crusade. In 2016, President Obama presented McBride with the National Humanities Medal for, quote, "humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America." When McBride was a teenager, he discovered his mother was Jewish, the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi. He's the son of a white mother and an African American father who died shortly before McBride was born. Our guest, James McBride, first became known for his memoir, "The Color Of Water," about growing up in a Brooklyn housing project.
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