Literary Fiction · Free kit
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
In 1972, workers digging on Chicken Hill in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, find a skeleton at the bottom of a well — and a mezuzah that does not belong with a body. James McBride winds the story back to the 1920s and '30s, when Jewish immigrants and African Americans shared the hill, Moshe Ludlow booked jazz into his theater, and Chona Ludlow kept the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store open as the neighborhood's stubborn heartbeat. When the state comes for Dodo, a Deaf boy in Nate and Addie Timblin's care, the hill has to decide what a neighbor is worth. Funny, crowded, and unsparing about who America protects.
“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 tikkun olam, to improve the world.”
Complete free book club kit
BookClubee may earn a commission from Bookshop.org purchases, which supports independent bookshops.
Plan your meeting
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store Would You Rather
Both options cost something. Pick a side and defend it.
Would You Rather? · 1 / 25
Would you rather live on Chicken Hill in the 1930s, where everyone knows you and the store is always open...