Punk not dead
lithobid 300 James McBride, who won for his novel “The Good Lord Bird,” and was dressed in a cheerful black bowler hat and tux, grew sad. He told us that while he was writing the book, his mother (the subject of his terrific memoir “The Color of Water”) died, so did his niece, and then his marriage fell apart. He escaped by living inside the heads of his characters, fiery abolitionists in John Brown’s brigade.