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The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store has vigorous and distinctive prose and a big cast of vividly realized characters set in the Black and immigrant (mostly Jewish) section of a Pennsylvania industrial town in the 1920s and 1930s. The novel begins with the modern-day discovery of a body.
How the corpse got there and who he was in life, however, is a mere detail in the lively pagent provided by hardscrabble Chicken Hill and particularly its grocery store, a community lifeline in hard times, thanks to its good-natured proprietors Chona and Moshe Ludlow.
In a time of open racial discrimination, the Ludlows count both employees and friends across the color barrier, especially the Tamblins. When the latter asks for help in preventing a young deaf relative from being sent to a notorious orphanage, they agree, setting off a gripping and fast-moving plot.
8 authors picked The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review
“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for…