The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store came out in August of 2023 and ran away with a bunch of awards. The New York Times bestseller was chosen as a New York Times notable book and a readers pick of the best 100 books of the 21st century. It won the 2024 Library of Congress prize for American Fiction and Best Book of the Year by NPR, Washington Post, and Time Magazine. It also deals with some difficult topics, such as: child abuse and child death, confinement, infertility, pedophilia, physical abuse, racial slurs, racism, rape, sexism, sexual assult, forced institutionalism, antisemitism, medical content, murder, injury, classism, and general violence. There is one particular account that was difficult for me to read, but other than that there is nothing very graphic.

The residents of Chicken Hill, a rundown neighborhood where Pottstown, Pennsylvania's black and Jewish live side by side, have had a secret for years. A secret that explains the skeleton that workers digging a foundation recently found at the bottom of a well and the events that led to that skeleton's death. Such as, what really happened to Chona Ludlow, who ran the Heaven & Earth grocery store as her husband focused on running his theater. How a little deaf boy gets taken by the state to an institution "for his own good" and how Chona and Nate Timblin, a prominent member of Chicken Hill's black community, try to keep the boy safe.

This book was wonderful and it gave me such anxiety. There are a lot of side stories going on that do not seem to have much to do with the main storyline, yet all of them overlap and come together in the end in a seamless way that I really appreciated. The writing was really well done, the story never seemed sluggish and was always moving. The majority of the characters, including the side characters, were all well developed, realistic, and mostly likeable. I found the ending to be mostly satisfactory, and I can't really think of an ending that I would have liked better that would have left me entirely happy, so I can't really complain. Full of difficult realities for all of the different parts of the American diaspora and not always easy to read, but realities that we need to face regardless.

I'm giving The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store 4 stars out of 5. I'm happy that I got to read it and also, the stress almost gave me a heart attack in the last half of the book.

For more from James McBride, see his website at https://www.jamesmcbride.com/

Pairs well with sweet potato pie and understanding that in the Revolutionary War, the British wore the red coats, Americans were in blue.