Good Lord Bird (McBride)

Book Reviews
[A] magnificent…brilliant romp of a novel about [John] Brown…McBride—with the same flair for historical mining, musicality of voice and outsize characterization that made his memoir, The Color of Water, an instant classic—pulls off his portrait masterfully, like a modern-day Mark Twain: evoking sheer glee with every page…McBride sanctifies by humanizing; a larger-than-life warrior lands—warts, foibles, absurdities and all—right here on earth, where he's a far more accessible friend…In [McBride's] hands, John Brown is a wild and crazy old man—and more a hero than ever before.
Baz Dreisinger - New York Times Book Review


A superbly written novel.... Through crackling prose and smart, wryly humorous dialogue, McBride tells his story through the eyes of the slave Henry Shackleford, who as a young boy is kidnapped by Brown during one of his Kansas raids. Wrapping the ugliness of slavery in a pitch-perfect adventure story is more than just a reimagining of an historic event. McBride, as he did in Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, transcends history and makes it come alive.
Chicago Tribune


Absorbing and darkly funny.... [A]t heart, the novel is an homage to a complex and fascinating American hero and a superbly inventive retelling of an American tale.
San Francisco Chronicle


James McBride made a gutsy decision when he chose to retell the rather tragic story of John Brown's failed slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859 as a historical romp with a gender-bending male slave as the great abolitionist's sidekick. The resulting new novel, The Good Lord Bird, is not only an irrepressibly fun read, but an iconoclastic exploration of a period in American history, the antebellum slave era, that we tend to handle with kid gloves.
Seattle Times


It takes a daring writer to tackle a decidedly unflattering pre-Civil War story. Yet, in McBride's capable hands, the indelicate matter of a befuddled tween from the mid-19th century provides a new perspective on one of the most decisive periods in the history of this country.
NPR


[A] fresh perspective on abolitionist firebrand John Brown in this novel disguised as the memoir of a slave boy who pretends to be a girl in order to escape pre–Civil War turmoil, only to find himself riding with John Brown’s retinue of rabble-rousers from Bloody Kansas to Harpers Ferry.... [Henry] eventually meets Frederick Douglass...Harriet Tubman...[and] the slave girl Sibonia, who courageously dies for freedom.... Outrageously funny, sad, and consistently unflattering, McBride puts a human face on a nation at its most divided.
Publishers Weekly


McBride continues exploring the long history of America's color line, begun in his landmark memoir, The Color of Water. A young slave in the Kansas Territory, Henry Shackleford must flee with abolitionist John Brown after Brown clashes with Henry's master. Complicating matters: Brown thinks Henry is a girl, a disguise Henry maintains up to the bold raid on Harpers Ferry.
Library Journal


The unlikely narrator of the events leading up to Brown's quixotic raid at Harper's Ferry is Henry Shackleford, aka Little Onion, [who]...Brown whisks the 12-year-old away thinking he's a girl, and Onion keeps up the disguise for the next few years.... At the end, Onion reasserts his identity as a male and escapes just before Brown's execution. McBride presents an interesting experiment in point of view here, as all of Brown's activities are filtered through the eyes of a young adolescent who wavers between innocence and cynicism.
Kirkus Reviews