The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
by James McBride
Genre: Literary Fiction
Published: August 28, 2023
Page Count: 400 pages
Summary:
WINNER OF THE 2024 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRIZE FOR AMERICAN FICTION
FROM ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF 2024
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR/FRESH AIR, WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, AND TIME MAGAZINE
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
There was an old Jew who lived at the site of the old synagogue up on Chicken Hill in the town of Pottstown, Pa., and when Pennsylvania State Troopers found the skeleton at the bottom of an old well off Hayes Street, the old Jew's house was the first place they went to.
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"I have good news. I have found a wife."
"You found a what?"
"A wife."
Moshe, seated on the floor, stared up at him, stunned. "Why should I care that you found a wife? I have my own wife to worry about."
For the first time, the man in the doorway, his face brimming with confidence, seemed to wither. He looked genuinely hurt. "But you said I should get one."
"What am I, mashed potatoes? What do I care if you have a wife? My own wife is sick at this very moment. Pox on you that you should bother me at this time. Yellow and green, you should become. Take all the flour you want and go flap your tongue someplace else, you dumb Pole. Get away from me!"
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I read. That's what I love to do. But I am also crazy about my guitar, drawing, writing, photography, puppets, traveling, baking, gardens, and walking....and let's not forget serendipity and paradox....
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