The history that does matter to them is that of their local church and even that of the dreaded red ants that infest the neighborhood (McBride playfully traces the history of these ants back to 1951 Colombia). What matters to this community is when one of their own gets in trouble or goes missing, not which president is in office or Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. This is not a typical historical novel: events outside the Cause don’t merit much attention. Even though the individuals inhabiting the Cause have nicknames as interesting as their backstories, they only matter insofar as they relate to one another. But this is not a crime novel: it is a love song for an unusual community. The eponymous protagonist (also called Sportcoat), a widowed alcoholic and deacon at the local Baptist church, commits a crime that puzzles everyone who knows him. This novel is set in a Brooklyn housing project called the Cause in 1969.
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