The narrative flows seamlessly from buoyant and comical black jive to somber, pitch-perfect descriptives of the histories and hard lives of those doing the talking, many with nicknames: Hot Sausage, the Elephant, Lightbulb. But, significantly, it offers its inhabitants a view of the Statue of Liberty. Once dominated by newly arrived Italians, it now struggles with a racial and economic mix. It is also a witty sociological study of a waterfront Brooklyn community dotted with crummy apartments in high-rise housing projects - poor but lively, with derelict docks where crime and commerce mix. With Sportcoat and Hettie, who arrived at the Cause Houses neighborhood in 1945 as part of the great migration of Southern blacks, the novel becomes a moving love story. He is a bit Hamlet-like, talking to the ghost of his wife, Hettie, a beloved member of his church who was found dead in harbor waters two years before the shooting. With Sportcoat, a 71-year-old deacon at Five Ends Baptist Church, McBride has created a flawed but compelling and even heroic central figure.
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