The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
By James McBride
381 pages
What’s it about?
This novel opens in 1972 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania when construction workers discover an old skeleton that must have been buried long ago. The skeleton is found in a neighborhood that used to be called Chicken Hill. A neighborhood where newly immigrated Jews and African Americans lived side by side. This story mainly takes place 40 years earlier when Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived in Chicken Hill and owned the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. Slowly the story unfolds and we understand just who that skeleton belongs to and how it ended up there.What did it make me think about?
How hard it is to live in the margins.Should I read it?
I have such respect and admiration for James McBride’s talent- and that was before I read his latest book. This book was my absolute favorite James McBride story! I just loved the characters he created in this one. Moshe, Chona, Nate, Addie, Dodo, Monkey Boy- and so many other characters just jumped off the page for me. Even the characters with smaller roles in the story were so well-drawn. This is a must read for 2023! And when you turn the last page- read the acknowledgments for a whole new level of admiration. Don’t miss this one!Quote-
“Chona had never been one to play by the rules of American society. She did not experience the world as most people did. To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don’t touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkum olum, to improve the world. The tiny woman with the bad foot was all soul. “What’s it about?
This novel opens in 1972 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania when construction workers discover an old skeleton that must have been buried long ago. The skeleton is found in a neighborhood that used to be called Chicken Hill. A neighborhood where newly immigrated Jews and African Americans lived side by side. This story mainly takes place 40 years earlier when Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived in Chicken Hill and owned the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. Slowly the story unfolds and we understand just who that skeleton belongs to and how it ended up there.
What did it make me think about?
How hard it is to live in the margins.
Should I read it?
I have such respect and admiration for James McBride’s talent- and that was before I read his latest book. This book was my absolute favorite James McBride story! I just loved the characters he created in this one. Moshe, Chona, Nate, Addie, Dodo, Monkey Boy- and so many other characters just jumped off the page for me. Even the characters with smaller roles in the story were so well-drawn. This is a must read for 2023! And when you turn the last page- read the acknowledgments for a whole new level of admiration. Don’t miss this one!
Quote-
“Chona had never been one to play by the rules of American society. She did not experience the world as most people did. To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don’t touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkum olum, to improve the world. The tiny woman with the bad foot was all soul. “
