The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride -> Starting August 24th, 2024

[Aly]

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing development, the last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long-held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows.

Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.

[Vicki]

Through Ch. 8 / 24%

(view spoiler)[I'm trying to get into this one, but it's not working for me for some reason.

How about those names? Paper, Fatty, Big Soap, Dodo...lol I think the names are hilarious.

Malachai was a strange guy. His bakery/baking was pretty disgusting, right?

I thought sure that Chona was going to die early in the book, but I'm glad she didn't. I was pretty shocked at how Moshe put Dodo in that cold, dark room but so glad that Chona spoke up...poor little guy. I hope they're able to protect him from the government taking him and he finds love and family.

I also like how multicultural the town of Chicken Hill (and I guess the nearby city) is. I understand why Chona wants to stay there and not move. (hide spoiler)]

[Trisha]

I'm starting tomorrow!

[Vicki]

I guess I never got back to commenting. Jeez lol