Dive into the heartwarming narrative of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, a tale that masterfully intertwines the lives of a diverse community with humor and grace. Continue reading to discover how James McBride’s latest masterpiece captures the essence of human connection and resilience.

Genres

Historical Fiction, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction, Cultural, Social Issues, Community, American Literature, Inspirational, Realistic Fiction, Personal Development, Biography, Memoir, Society, Culture

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride unfolds in Chicken Hill, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where a skeleton’s discovery in a well propels us into a story rich with small-town secrets and a tapestry of interconnected lives. The narrative spans nearly half a century, delving into the experiences of immigrants, Jewish, and Black communities, and their shared histories. Central to the story is a young deaf boy’s plight, which becomes a focal point for the community’s struggle against systemic injustices.

Review

McBride’s novel is a vibrant, compassionate, and humorous exploration of community and identity. Selected as one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2023, it has garnered acclaim for its authentic portrayal of the struggles and triumphs of life on the margins. The characters are crafted with depth and affection, and the storytelling is both engaging and thought-provoking, making it a compelling read that resonates with a wide audience.

Introduction: A story of community, heart, and hope

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (2023) is the richly-textured story of a small, diverse community centered around the Jewish-owned Heaven and Earth Grocery Store in Pottstown Pennsylvania in the 20s and 30s, and of the big events – love, death, murder, kidnapping – that mark the lives of the people connected to it.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is more than just a Jewish-owned deli in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. It is at the heart of the diverse community of Chicken Hill in the 1920s and 30s, a communal hub offering both physical and spiritual nourishment. Here, you’ll meet memorable characters like the store’s owner Chona, a wise and compassionate Polish Jewish immigrant who faces illness and injustice with empathy and grace, her Saturday helper Paper (so-called because she knows more about the comings and goings in Chicken Hill than the local newspaper), Moshe, Chona’s sweet, steady husband, and Nate, Moshe’s street-savvy but tender-hearted employee. When a terrible fate befalls Nate’s adopted son, Dodo, the whole community must put aside differences of race and religion and work together to bring the boy home.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store on Chicken Hill

This story begins with a gruesome discovery on Chicken Hill, Pottstown, Pennsylvania. A skeleton, at the bottom of an old well. Also: a belt buckle, the tattered remains of a costume, and a woven pendant, later identified as a mezuzah, a sacred Jewish object usually placed at a home’s threshold. The police suspect that an old Jew named Malachi, the last remaining Jew on Chicken Hill, knows something about the murder. But before they can close in on him, a huge storm, Hurricane Agnes, blows through Pottstown, flattening most of it. The skeleton washes away. Malachi disappears and is never seen again.

Rewind 47 years, to 1925. Moshe Ludlow, a Jewish theater owner, walks dejectedly into the Heaven and Earth Grocery store on Chicken Hill. The theater he owns isn’t doing well, but the sight of Chona, the shopowner’s beautiful daughter, cheers him. Later that week, at a Klezmer concert in his theater, Moshe is entranced at the sight of a hasidic Jew, clearly newly arrived from the old country, who dances like a whirlwind. He will say nothing more about where he is from or what he is doing here. “Wherever you’re from,” Moshe tells him, “must be the home of the world’s greatest dancer.”

Moshe keeps coming back to the Heaven and Earth grocery store, where Chona counsels him through his business troubles, referring back to stories from the Torah. After three weeks of these visits, Moshe proposes marriage. Chona accepts.

Nate, Moshe’s Black employee, remarks that it’s a long time since any of Chicken Hill’s Black residents enjoyed a concert – the last theater catering to them has closed. Moshe thinks: What if he opened his theater to Black audiences, too? He is nervous at the prospect, but fair-minded Chona urges him on. He books the Black entertainer Chick Webb, and the concert is a sellout. Soon Moshe’s success rivals that of larger theater-owners. It also brings out racist and antisemitic complaints from Pottstown’s white residents – there are Blacks all over town, now, they gripe, and a money-grabbing Jew behind it all!

Moshe doesn’t mind. He’s now so successful that he tells Chona they can close the grocery store and move off Chicken Hill to one of the city’s tonier suburbs. Chona refuses. She likes working at the store, and she likes Chicken Hill. Despite their new wealth, they stay there. But ever since a childhood bout of polio left her crippled, Chona’s health has been frail. In 1936, she grows sick and seems certain to die. In what appear to be her final days, a steady stream of mostly Black customers come to pay their respects. They haven’t forgotten how Chona served them. One guest is especially insistent – Moshe wakes to them banging on the shop door at dawn. It is the Hasid. He introduces himself as Malachi and says he wants to buy flour to make Challah.

Chona’s fever breaks. Malachi visits with the Challah and says that the bread will be part of Chona’s healing. He says he is thinking of opening a bakery on Chicken Hill. Moshe gifts him with a Mezuzah that can be worn around the neck – it says “Home of the World’s Greatest Dancer” and Moshe explains that wherever Malachi wears his Mezuzah, he will be home. Malachi later gives the mezuzah to Chona.

Shortly after that, Malachi disappears again.

ANALYSIS

While The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store features a dizzying array of characters, from pivotal players like Moshe and Chona to the rotating cast of union men, neighborhood children, gangsters, city officials, and swing musicians, its setting is tightly confined to the small city of Pottstown Pennsylvania, and more specifically, the neighborhood of Chicken Hill. By focusing on this small yet remarkably diverse neighborhood, McBride is able to explore the tensions between all Pottstown’s different groups: Black, white, Jewish, established, immigrant. Even within these groups, there are faultlines. The Blacks that live on Hemlock Row, above Chicken Hill, sneer at how the Chicken Hill Blacks strive to make themselves respectable in the eyes of their white employers; German-speaking Jews regard Yiddish-speaking Jews as provincial; Italian women from different regions squabble about the best way to prepare traditional recipes. And yet, the novel shines a light on the ways certain characters – like Chona and Nate – work to create connections across this minefield of oppression, tension, and difference. Ultimately, Chicken Hill, with its patchwork of races and religions, is portrayed as a close knit community and refuge.

Dodo, the disappearing boy

One day, Moshe’s employee Nate comes to him with a proposition. Nate and his wife Addie are guardians of Nate’s nephew Dodo, a boy who was left blind and deaf after a stove exploded in his kitchen. Dodo is capable and sharp-witted, but the state services want to put him in special school. Nate knows Dodo doesn’t belong there. He asks Moshe if he and Chona can conceal the boy in their house, just until the state stops looking for him. They agree. But the state keeps sniffing around. Addie and Paper, the Black woman who works Saturdays in the Heaven and Earth, suspect someone on Chicken Hill is running their mouth. Chona hits on a solution: she comes to an arrangement with her Black neighbor Bernice. Chona will cut a hole in the fence between their houses and if the state comes looking for him again, Dodo will slip through, where he’ll easily blend with Bernice’s eight kids. The plan works … for a time.

Doc Roberts, Pottstown’s most respected white doctor, is an embittered middle-aged man. He’s stuck in a loveless marriage and thinks that Pottstown is getting overrun with Blacks and immigrants. He has a special resentment of Chona, who rejected his advances when they were at high school together. He gets wind of the rumor that she is hiding Dodo.

He pays a visit to the Heaven and Earth. Dodo, concealed in the storeroom, listens to Doc intimating to Chona that she is hiding the boy who is wanted by the state. Doc’s questioning turns aggressive. Chona, still in poor health, collapses into a seizure. Dodo races up to help her, and finds  Doc grabbing Chona’s breasts violently while she is unconscious. He attacks Doc, who calls the police. Dodo tries to escape but is injured and captured.

When we next see Dodo, he is on ward C1 at the Pennhurst State Hospital for Insane and Feeble-Minded children, where he has been taken by the state. In the neighboring bed is another boy, who Dodo names “Monkey Pants” because of the monkey diaper he wears. Monkey Pants has cerebral palsy and is non-verbal, but Dodo feels a connection with him.

Back on Chicken Hill, rumors are spreading about exactly what happened to Dodo. Some are false – like the rumor Moshe and Chona have been paid handsomely in return for hiding Dodo. Some are true – like the rumor that Doc Roberts was about to rape the unconscious Chona.

As for Chona, she has lain in hospital in a coma ever since the day Doc Roberts came to the Heaven and Earth.

Meanwhile, an issue has arisen at the shul – the synagogue – in Chicken Hill. A bullfrog has been found in the mikvah, the bathhouse used for religious ceremonies. A rich member of the congregation offers to pay for a new one. But the situation is more complicated than it first appears. Chona’s father built the shul and had trouble finding a water source for the mikvah. The city refused to run an official water line to the shul, saying it “wasn’t a priority.” And Chona’s father held a long-standing grudge with the nearest well-owner, so drawing water from there was out of the question. A series of disagreements and misunderstandings ensued, with the ultimate effect that the shul started siphoning water from the well that supplied the nearest public faucet, without ever paying the city for it, even after water lines were run up to the Hill. Rabbi Feldman goes straight from the meeting about the mikvah to the hospital, to pay a visit to Chona. While he is making awkward smalltalk with Nate, Addie and Bernice in the hospital corridor, Moshe’s howls can be heard from inside her room. Chona has died.

ANALYSIS

Much of The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store’s plot hinges on secrets, and on the unique ways they are kept, ignored, distorted or revealed in tight-knit communities like Chicken Hill. The weightiest secret is, of course, the secret of Dodo’s whereabouts, and this secret is revealed with tragic consequences. There are open secrets, too, like the secret of how the mikvah is supplied with water – a provisional arrangement made by a marginalized community when the local government refuses to acknowledge their presence. Chicken Hill is home to all kinds of workarounds, backhanded deals, and makeshift arrangements like this one. The community functions because, for the most part, its members keep each other’s secrets. If secrets are a currency, then gossip and rumors are, too, demonstrated by the way different versions of Doc Roberts fateful visit to the grocery store are swiftly circulated. As a white man, whose assault was only witnessed by a disabled Black boy, Doc is sure that he’ll be able to maintain control of the narrative – and perhaps this is true in Pottstown’s better-heeled suburbs. But the whisper network on Chicken Hill soon casts suspicion on Doc.

A tunnel, a well, and a reckoning

The residents of Chicken Hill come together in an attempt to rescue Dodo from the state hospital. Paper, Fatty (Bernice’s brother) and Big Soap (as Enzo, an Italian immigrant, is known) make the drive from Chicken Hill to Hemlock Row, a solely Black neighborhood, where nearly everyone is a member of the Lowgod family, and no-one has any interest in assimilating to white American society. They are here to meet with Miggy Fludd, nee Lowgod, who works as a cleaner at Pennhurst, and moonlights as a clairvoyant on nights off. She explains there’s a Lowgod working in Pennhurst who they need to know – she types his name on a card. Son of Man.

At Pennhurst, Dodo is drugged and restrained. While confined to his bed, he learns to communicate with Monkey Pants. They begin speaking through gestures and facial expressions and graduate to tapping out letters of the alphabet. Dodo is in Pennhurst for five weeks before Son of Man is rostered onto his ward as an attendant. When he sees Dodo he smiles at him and strokes his forehead. Dodo is overwhelmed. This is the first sign of affection he’s received in over a month. But Monkey Pants is nervous. He taps out that the man’s name is Son of Man – and he is Bad. Very bad.

Moshe closes the store. He is wracked with grief. Suddenly, Malachi appears. He has come from Poland. There is trouble in Europe, he says, and besides, he has heard the sad news about Chona. He has decided it is time to make Chicken Hill his home for good. Down from the hill, in Pottstown, Doc Roberts is also wracked – with nerves. No-one with any influence is questioning his version of what happened that day at the Heaven and Earth. But there is some incriminating evidence. When he assaulted Chona he ripped a pendant from around her neck – a mezuzah, bearing a yiddish inscription. He needs to get rid of it,

Paper and Fattie have another meeting with Miggy, over a slice of Paper’s famous pumpkin pie. Miggy reveals that Son of Man abuses the patients in his care – one of them has even disappeared. She uses her fork on a slice of pie to map out all the routes in and out of Pennhurst – including the abandoned tunnels underneath it. She suspects that’s where Son of Man hid the boy he abducted years ago. There’s someone else who knows about these tunnels, Miggy surmises: Egg Man. Egg Man is a contact of Son of Man’s who delivers coffee and fresh eggs to every ward at Pennhurst each morning. Pennhurst is big but Egg Man is remarkably quick. Miggy thinks this is because he is using the tunnels, too. Miggy sets up a meeting at Hemlock Row between Nate and the Egg Man.

Nate is due to meet the Egg Man on Memorial Day, the same day that Fatty has been hired to connect the Shul’s pipes to the city’s water supply in a way that makes it look like they are officially connected. That same night, on Ward C1, Fatty is hired to tap the Shul’s pipes into the city water under the cover of night. Pull off the manhole cover, then replace with a cover painted to look like old rusted concrete. 30 dollars, a lot of money on the line. But Nate decides this same night is the night to break out Dodo. Son of Man tries to molest Dodo, but Monkey Pants fakes a violent seizure and saves Dodo by distracting Son of Man. The pair fall asleep touching fingers through the rails of their beds. When Dodo wakes, Monkey Pants’ finger is still touching his, but Monkey Pants is dead.

The Memorial Day Parade has gotten off to a late start. Doc Roberts is co-marshal, along with Gus Plitzka. Plitzka is a prominent dairy farmer, prone to shady dealing, who is in serious debt with the local mob boss, Nig Rosen. On the day of the parade he is especially nervous – Nig has implied that if Plitzka doesn’t pay soon, things will turn violent. Doc and Plitzka are wearing red military coats, but at the last minute, Plitzka changes into a blue coat.

Fatty and Big Soap are prying off the manhole cover, near the faucet when Henry Lit, Nig Rosen’s hired goon, stops to drink from the faucet. Lit is on a mission: he has sighted Plitzka, in his red parade coat, and just needs to find an opportunity to rough him up. Fatty and Big Soap connect the pipes, then, with the manhole cover still open, sneak away to get some sand from the creek, which they’ll use to color the concrete they need to repair the well cover.

Doc stays after the parade, getting progressively drunker. Then, he cuts across Chicken Hill on his way home, planning to get rid of the incriminating mezuzah here. Henry Lit watches, mistaking him for Gus. Lit follows him onto the hill then knocks him out with a fist to the jaw, and is surprised to hear a splash, because he knows for a fact that Gus – who is actually Doc – has fallen next to the faucet he drank from earlier today.

Of course, Doc has fallen through the open manhole cover and into the open well. Fatty and Big Soap don’t see him at the bottom of the well when they return. They fit the cover and are on their way – job done.

The next morning the Egg Man drives his horse and cart up through the tunnel under Pennhurst and onto ward C1. But there are more than just eggs and coffee in his cart. Nate leaps down from where he has hidden on the back of the cart and fatally stabs Son of Man, before escaping with Dodo in his arms.

The novel’s epilogue describes how Nate and Dodo escape to South Carolina, and where they live on a farm paid for by Isaac, Moshes’ cousin. Dodo, now known as Nate Love II, grows up and has children. He is happy. He forgets almost everything about his life in Pennsylvania, except for Addie, and Chona, and Monkey Pants. He dies on June 22, 1972, the same day that Hurricane Agnes wipes most of Pottstown Pennsylvania off the map, and the same day that the old Jew known as Malachi disappears forever.

ANALYSIS

In an afterword to the novel, McBride explains that the first spark of the idea that would become The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store came from McBride’s own experiences with a man called Sy Friend, the director of The Variety Club Camp for Disabled Children in Worcester Pennsylvania. McBride worked for Sy for four summers in the seventies, and recounted how Sy put inclusivity, love, acceptance, and kindness without condescension at the center of his life. The Variety Club Camp couldn’t be further from Pennhurst hospital – but, in the way that The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store shows how redemption and meaning can be found when people, in this case specifically the Black and Jewish communities of Chicken Hill, work together, the novel echoes these same themes of respect, inclusion, and kindness.

Conclusion

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride tells the tale of how a community was forged between the diverse inhabitants of Chicken Hill, and how, through twists and turns, that community pulled together to rescue a vulnerable boy from a terrible fate.

About the Author

James McBride

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