A mesmerizing Grocery store
A heartwarming story that spills with outrage, kindness, fear, compassion, and community spirit
The craftsmanship of a soulful musician emerges through each page of celebrated bestselling author James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. Set in the 1970s, the book opens with the discovery of a skeleton at the bottom of an abandoned well in the grimy eastern Pennsylvania factory town of Chicken Hill area in Pottstown. The area has been marked for redevelopment of a residential project.
The residents are a potpourri of poor working-class local black Americans and immigrant Jews who have lived quietly for decades. Suddenly, the question of whose skeleton it is and how it landed at the bottom of the well is on the minds of the investigators. But a crime always has the habit of leaving some or the other clue behind. In this murder story, it is a belt buckle and pendant. Old-timers of Chicken Hill have been tight-lipped about it and have kept the secret under wraps for over four decades. The shuffles back to the 1930s.
THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE
Author: James McBride
Publisher: Riverhead Books