Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
By James McBride
Published 2023
Read May 2024
McBride’s book starts with the discovery of a body in an old well in 1972 near Pottstown, PA. Little remains with the skeleton.
But we don’t hear anything about this situation for most of the book. Instead, McBride takes us back to about 1925 and introduces us to Moshe Ludlow, a Jewish immigrant from Romania, who runs a theatre and dance hall in Pottstown that books musical acts catering to Jewish people. He meets Chona, the daughter of a Jewish grocer on Chicken Hill, a neighborhood of Pottstown where Blacks and European immigrants dwell. They fall in love, marry, and live upstairs from the grocery store which Chona inherits from her father. Mosha expands his business to cater as well to the Black population while Chona runs the grocery store. Moshe’s decision to expand his business causes some concern in the town. Chona’s store doesn’t make a profit as she gives credit to the residents of Chicken Hill who need the help, and she rarely receives payment back. Mosha wants to move down the hill, closer to downtown and closer to many Jews who have moved there but Chona will have nothing of it, so they stay.
As we read further, we are introduced to a whole variety of characters from Pottstown and Chicken Hill—Black, white, and Jewish-all of whom are well developed with strong points and flaws. Impatient readers may find this frustrating as it’s not clear what these characters have to do with the main story which we might think is about Moshe and Chona. But we’re told patience is a virtue and it certainly pays off in this book. The connections between complicated web of multiple stories and their various characters slowly becomes clear when Nate, a Black man who often works for Moshe and whom isn’t originally from the area asks Moshe to hide Dodo, a boy who was hurt in an accident which left him nearly deaf and dumb. Dodo is being pursued by the state to be taken to an institution for the feeble minded and disabled (it actually existed in the area for 79 years and closed in 1987). By the end of the book we understand the connections, see some resolution of the various stories and have an answer about the identity of the skeleton and how it came to be there.
This is an absolutely delightful book. Be patient! Let yourself seep into the world McBride’s characters live. Enjoy the vibrant characters McBride creates. Experience various prejudices that plague various parts of the community and the distrust each group tends to have for the others. You will be hooked by this complicated community and likely, like this reader, you won’t quickly leave it.
MarshaReads.com 