The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

From James McBride, the author of the acclaimed Deacon King Kong and the award-winning The Good Lord Bird, comes a captivating novel centered around the secrets kept in a small town. In 1972, a skeleton was discovered in a well during the construction of a new development in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The residents of Chicken Hill, a run-down neighborhood where Jews and African Americans coexist, hold onto long-held secrets about the mysterious skeleton. This is where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived, the former integrating his theater and the latter running the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. Together with Nate Timblin, the Black janitor and unofficial leader of the Black community, Chona works to protect a deaf boy from being institutionalized by the state. As the lives of these characters intertwine, McBride reveals just how much those on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and fight to survive. Ultimately, the novel shows that even in the darkest of times, it is love