# The Good Lord Bird

The Good Lord Bird is a 2013 novel by American journalist and author James McBride about Henry Shackleford, a slave, who unites with John Brown in Brown's abolitionist mission. The novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2013 and received generally positive reviews from critics.

## Plot

The memoirs of Henry Shackleford, a fictional enslaved boy in Kansas during the Bleeding Kansas era, are discovered in a Delaware church. Henry, nicknamed "Little Onion" for eating a particularly rancid onion, accidentally encounters abolitionist John Brown in a tavern. Brown mistakes Henry for a girl and gives him a dress to wear; Shackleford wears a dress for much of the novel. The two join together, and Henry narrates his encounters with Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and the events at John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. The book is narrated in the first person through Henry.

## Reception

The novel received generally positive reviews from critics, with several reviewers comparing it to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Héctor Tobar called the novel "laugh-out-loud funny and filled with many wonderfully bizarre images", but noted the lack of humanity in comparison to Huckleberry Finn or Middle Passage (1990). According to Book Marks, the book received a "rave" consensus, based on twelve critic reviews: seven "rave", four "positive", and one "mixed". On the March/April 2014 issue of Bookmarks, the book received a (4.0 out of 5) with the critical summary stating, "Most agreed that McBride has taken a risk with his irreverent approach. Although The Good Lord Bird might offend some readers, it might also offer "a new way of talking-indeed joking-about race in America today" (New York Times Book Review)". On The Omnivore, in an aggregation of British and American press reviews, the book received an "omniscore" of 4.0 out of 5.
Tobar went on to say "those looking for verisimilitude or gravitas in their historical fiction might want to avoid The Good Lord Bird." Laura Miller of Salon drew comparisons between the novel and Huckleberry Finn, specifically comparing the moral awakening of Finn to the journey of Henry; writer Christine Brunkhorst notes how Onion and Finn both encounter "drunken rebels, brutal slave owners, spineless men, clairvoyant women, crooked judges and some brave and principled people." In a review for the San Francisco Chronicle, novelist Amity Gaige praised McBride's "reimagining" of Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry and added that he "[managed] to novelize real historical events without dreary prostrations to the act".

## Awards

The novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2013. National Book Award judges called McBride "a voice as comic and original as any we have heard since Mark Twain." McBride did not prepare an acceptance speech, as he thought he would not win, and was described as "clearly stunned" upon receiving the award.
| Year | Award | Category | Result |
| 2013 | National Book Award | Fiction | Won |
| 2014 | Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence | Fiction | Longlisted |
| 2014 | BCALA Literary Awards | Fiction | Won |
| 2014 | Booklist Editors' Choice | Adult Audio | Won |
| 2014 | Hurston/Wright Legacy Award | Fiction | Finalist |
| 2014 | Maine Readers' Choice Award | — | Longlisted |
| 2015 | International Dublin Literary Award | — | Longlisted |
| 2015 | Meilleurs livres de l'année du magazine Lire | Révélation étrangère | Longlisted |

## Adaptation

Ethan Hawke and Jason Blum adapted the book for a television show, which premiered on October 4, 2020 on Showtime.