A historical novel that rises above the genre: The Good Lord Bird

Rare near unanimity from Book Group last night (LR the lone-wolf exception) on the high quality of James McBride's novel The Good Lord Bird, with particular praise coming for his use of the comic American vernacular, his seemingly accurate evocation of an iconic but, weird, episode in American history, and his imaginative examination of boundaries and differences - racial, economic, cultural, regional. As noted in earlier post, I think his interest in these boundaries and ambiguities - the liberating army that John Brown led was not exactly a band of idealists and intellectuals, Brown himself flawed and delusional, and on the other hand the black population holding a range of views toward one another and toward white America - arises from his own lifetime questioning of his own place and stance in American culture as a mixed-race child and writer. Have to put in a word here for McBride's excellence handling of the final sequences of the novel; though I agree with dissenter LR to some extent, in the novel seemed meandering and  plotless for quite a ways, I did come to accept that the Brown insurrection itself was meandering and plotless, and that McBride used the design of the novel to convey the essence of insurrection - its darkness, uncertainty, and confusions. But then he brings it all together quite effectively and dramatically in the siege at Harper's Ferry. And how can you not like a novel with so many fantastic turns of phrase: he drove that carriage like a gnat flying up a horse's ass. His face was wrinkled as a mop. To give just a few among many examples. Not usually drawn to historical fiction, but this one rises above the usual conventions and limitations of the genre and brings a forgotten moment in history alive - and provokes a lot of thought as well as to who was right, who was wrong. Much discussion about John Brown's strategy: did he really want the white people to know that they were converging on Harper's Ferry, in order to stir up the black masses even more dramatically? My view: absolutely not, he was not intentionally leading his people into slaughter, he just was delusional about the strength of his band and about the willingness of the blacks to rise up, and a terrible strategist when it came to detail. Not all agreed w/ this interpretation -- RR arguing that Brown purposely let the word of the insurrection get out into the community.