The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

The only other book I have read by James McBride is his amazing memoir, The Color of Water, although Deacon King Kong and The Good Lord Bird are both on my TBR pile. Having read only his memoir, I wondered if the character Chona in this book was an homage to his mother, a Jewish woman, who lived in Harlem, married to a Black man and who truly considered them all equal as human beings. Kirkus also comments on this, "It’s possible to draw a clear, straight line from McBride’s breakthrough memoir, The Color of Water (1996), to the themes of this latest work."

Set in small town Pennsylvania in the 1930's, in the neighborhood of "Chicken Hill, a hardscrabble section of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, that is home to African Americans who fled racial violence in the Deep South and Jews who escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe" (Booklist);  the rest of the white Christian town considers them lesser than. Of course, long after running water and sewer systems, paved sidewalks and streets have come to the main town, Chicken Hill remains without. Still the community is strong and Chona, a young Jewish woman who limps from polio, insists on running the only grocery store there at a loss, even though her husband has succeeded financially with 2 dance/ concert halls in town--both of them integrated. Although the book begins with a skeleton found in a well in the 1970's, that mystery is not resolved until the penultimate chapters of the book, while the focus for the remainder is on Chona and Moshe, their neighbors and a deaf Black boy, Dodo, they seek to hide from the state investigators who want to put him in a state asylum. Booklist goes on to say, "their neighbors are vibrant, complicated individuals, each improvising ways to get by, ultimately joining forces to try to keep the authorities from taking Dodo, a smart, sweet, Black, orphaned deaf boy, to the hellish state asylum. McBride incisively and prismatically evokes the timbre of Jewish and Black lives of the times, while spinning intriguing backstories and choreographing telling struggles over running water, class divides, and prejudice of all kinds. Funny, tender, knockabout, gritty, and suspenseful, McBride's microcosmic, socially critiquing, and empathic novel dynamically celebrates difference, kindness, ingenuity, and the force that compels us to move heaven and earth to help each other."

Library Jounal praises the book, closing their review by saying, "A compelling novel, compellingly written, and not to be missed." Publishers Weekly effuses, "McBride's pages burst with life, whether in descriptions of Moshe's dance hall, where folks get down to Chick Webb's 'gorgeous, stomping, low-down, rip-roaring, heart-racing jazz,' or a fortune teller who dances and cries out to God before registering her premonitions on a typewriter. This endlessly rich saga highlights the different ways in which people look out for one another." Likewise, Kirkus opens their review, "McBride follows up his hit novel Deacon King Kong (2020) with another boisterous hymn to community, mercy, and karmic justice." and praises his "the depth of characterizations and the pitch-perfect dialogue of his Black and Jewish characters."