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Presenter: James McBride's new novel opens with a skeleton found in a well. We're in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1972, and then the book travels back in time to the '30s to solve the mystery.

James McBride: It's just about a little town in Pennsylvania where this Jewish woman takes in this Black deaf boy, and the waves of activity that follow show us what America was and should be.

Presenter: The deaf boy is known as Dodo, and the Jewish woman who takes him in is Chona Ludlow, and she runs the shop that gives the novel its title, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. McBride's been writing about these themes since his 1996 memoir, The Color of Water. His book, Good Lord Bird about the John Brown Abolitionist Uprising won a National book award and became a mini-series for Showtime. James McBride spoke the other day with Julian Lucas, a staff writer for The New Yorker. Here's Julian.

Julian Lucas: Anyone who knows your work knows that you love to write about communities, whether that's John Brown's army marching through the South or the projects in Red Hook, which you fictionalized in your last novel. In this one, we have the Black and Jewish immigrant community of Chicken Hill in Pennsylvania. I wonder if we could start by just talking a little bit about that community, how you came to be interested in it, and to write a book set there.

James McBride: Well, the truth is I really wanted to write about this camp I used to work at outside Philly, that we learned from disabled children. The guy that ran the camp was a Jewish guy named [unintelligible 00:01:58]. This is in the '70s when I was in college and it was a life-changing experience for me.

Then I've always been interested in Jewish life because of my own history, because my mother was Jewish and so forth and grew up in a small town. Pennsylvania seems like a pretty good place to spend time, so I started driving around Pennsylvania. Then I looked on a map and I saw Pottsville. It was not far from Pittsburgh. Then I drove out that way, and as I was driving out that way, I noted-- I have one of those maps that you open up, I saw a Pottstown, so I went there and it was beautiful. It was a beautiful town.

I did my usual bit, monkeying around at the library and talking to people and stuff and going to Historical Society and I heard this name Chicken Hill bandied about. Then I found the format to work the story of community.

Julian Lucas: This is such an ingeniously plotted novel, almost like a Rube Goldberg machine in the way that rescuing Dodo from the institution summons all of the different forces of this community, and somehow, almost every single person is involved, whether they know it or not. I wonder how you plot your work. Do your characters tell you where they're going, or do you have a grand scheme ahead of you when you begin?

James McBride: Mostly in my books, I guess, if I have to analyze, the characters lead the way. I draw a big circle in my office and I just put each character there, and then I draw a line and I connect them to make sure, now how are they going to connect. I used to do A, B, C, D and then that just, afterwards, now I just do the circle and I just put all the characters in the circle, and they got to connect some way.

Julian Lucas: Always connect.

James McBride: Well, everything in life connects if it's right. What happened was I spent years trying to write this book about the camp. It wasn't happening. I spent more years researching and I still came up with nothing. I'd do it for a while, then I quit and I'd do it for a while and I quit. It's just research, research, reading, looking, going to places, and so forth.

What happened was when Moshe became real, I just put him on the page and let him go. Then Chona arrived and I knew I wanted to get a kid in this couple's lives. Then the plot started, then the road started to open more. The characters in this case, and I think it's probably all that way happens. I don't know. If I analyze it too much, I lose my mind. Basically, the characters start to open. They create the path

Julian Lucas: In this big, raucous American novel that has people from so many different backgrounds. Doc Roberts is this-- thinks he comes from a Mayflower family, old line white man of Pennsylvania who resents the way that the area's changing, is a Klansman and is probably the second biggest antagonist in the novel, and yet you really do get into his head in several chapters.

You give an almost empathetic description of the town that he misses where everyone knew each other and went to the Presbyterian Church. What was it like getting into the head of a character like this who really is afraid that his people are going to be replaced and who reacts very badly to that?

James McBride: I'm a Black man and I grew up in America, so I don't need to-- I've witnessed this kind of thing all my life. I've seen what one of those guys does when he becomes president, so it's not hard to get into that person's head. What's important is to show there’s some sympathy and empathy for that person, because Doc happens to be disabled as well.

I guess the only thing I really have a little bit of disdain for in my book and in my life is this whole business, “I'm one of the 14 people that arrived on the Mayflower and I'm the 14th--” I mean, come on. You know what I mean? I had enough of that. I wanted to point that out without pointing it out.

Julian Lucas: I laugh quite a bit at the moment where you have a dance that you describe as 19 mountain people whose 14th cousin arrived on the Mayflower, and their band sounds like boneless noise-producing junk mongers.

James McBride: That's about as deep as I go. That's about as deep as I poke it at them. You know what I mean? Some of that music's good. It's just that we all don't want to go clogging. Some of us just want to dance if we can. The truth is I dance like a white guy with one finger in the air and a beer on the other hand, so it ain't like I'm that cool either, but--

Julian Lucas: It seems like you're interested in characters who, their religious faith or their religious background inspires them to go beyond themselves, not to stay locked in a particular community, but to take their tradition and see how it connects them to others.

James McBride: Inspires them to kindness and wisdom, because those things last. Hate is like diesel and it just gobbles up fuel, but love and kindness, it’s like they just float like clouds. They just go out and it's easy. My characters, including John Brown, are characters who are driven by love. They're driven by the need for justice. I'm not one of them kind of guys who creates characters and runs them up a tree and throws cans at him. I ain't interested in that.

I want to read a book that makes me feel good about being alive. I just ain't that smart. I just want good things to happen. I'm not interested in bad. If I want to bad things to happen, I'll just read The New York Times or The Washington Post. I'm not interested in that. I want a book to take me to a place that I like to be.

Julian Lucas: I wonder, how did you become a writer?

James McBride: Man, that was a mistake. What happened was when I got out of Oberlin, I applied to Columbia because I was into social change. When I was at Oberlin, we went to this whole thing at [unintelligible 00:08:25], Nelson Mandela, he was in prison and so forth. I got active and so I wanted to become a journalist because I wanted to change the world. You see how that worked out. I ended up at Columbia, then I went to the Wilmington News Journal. From there, I went to The Boston Globe and then to People Magazine. I covered Michael Jackson exclusively for six months when I was at People.

Julian Lucas: Oh, wow.

James McBride: When I was in Boston, I didn't like Boston at all. I came there right after the busing thing, and-- One of the first stories I did at The Globe, I went out and this cat-- They sent me out to do a story about a priest in the South End. I knocked on the door and I had big Afro. This was before cell phones too now. I knocked on the door, I said, "Excuse me, miss,” I said, “My name's James McBride from The Boston Globe," and she said, "[beep]" This was the first thing out her mouth. She said, "[beep] get out of here." I said, "But I'm from The Boston Globe." She said, "I don't care where you're from [beep]. Get out of here."

[laughter]

She slammed the door and so I went down to the payphone and I called the paper and I got the city desk and I said-- and I didn't know who the city desk editor was, so I said, "Hey, my name's James McBride, I'm in the living section. I'm supposed to be interviewing this father, Father Waldron, and this lady's calling me names." The guy said, "Oh, she's calling you names, huh? Okay, well go back to work," and he hung the phone up.

Julian Lucas: Wow.

James McBride: Then I called the parish. I called- -the priest. I got someone on the phone and I said, "I'm coming to see you." I got him on the phone and he said, "Oh, come on down the street." I went back to the shelter and knocked on the door. When he opened the door and saw me, he said, "Oh, my God.' He said, "Oh, my God." He said, "I'm sorry." What happened was they had sheltered this lady or something and she just happened to open the door. He turned out to be a great cat. His name was Father Waldron and he was a wonderful man. I hope he's still alive.

Julian Lucas: Wow.

James McBride: I mean, that incident, it was like it set up my life, my time in Boston. I felt Philly was a much better place, man.

Julian Lucas: What you're saying is that woman saved you from both Boston and journalism?

James McBride: No, she taught me a lesson. The lesson she taught me was that, while something terrible can happen, just stay with it and something beautiful will happen. I knew Father Waldron for years. I talked to him maybe four or five years ago. If I had walked away and said, "The hell with it," I'd have never gotten this opportunity to meet this guy.

When I was on the subway with my mother one time when I was little, these people started calling her names, these guys, and they were calling her, "Look at her with those [beep] and all that." Later I asked her, I said, "Ma, why you let them call you--?" She said, "Their names can't hurt me. Did you do your math homework or not? Did you do it?" She just discarded what was negative.

My siblings and I are the same way. We laugh about this stuff. It doesn't matter. It's just a passing moment. Just go ahead and do what you have to do. Now, some of your listeners are going to get upset because I used the N word, blah, blah, blah. Look, let's get to the business of making this country better.

[MUSIC]

Presenter: Novelist James McBride speaking with staff writer Julian Lucas.

Julian Lucas: You've also been a musician for many years, so we wanted to play one of your compositions and ask you a few questions about it.

James McBride: All right, go ahead.

[MUSIC - Barney: Habari Gani.]

[laughter]

James McBride: Oh, my God.

Julian Lucas: Not a lot of people have worked with both Spike Lee and Barney in this world.

James McBride: Don't mess with my man Barney now. That's my man.

Presenter: McBride's new novel is The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. You can read Julian Lucas on books, art, music, video games, and all kinds of good stuff at newyorker.com.

[MUSIC]

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