This month, the club will be discussing “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride.
The novel is set in the Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, PA, and opens in 1972, as workers clearing the foundation for a new housing development unearth a human skeleton and a mezuzah, a small case that adorns the doorframe of Jewish homes. Police question an old man named Malachi, the last Jew left on Chicken Hill. But before the authorities can solve the puzzle, Hurricane Agnes sweeps through and washes away any evidence of the crime. The book then jumps back a half century to the 1920’s, to unfold the riddle of what happened. McBride’s novel, then, is a murder mystery that contains a powerful story of place and community, of love and hate and compassion and violence. It’s a whodunit wrapped around a quintessentially American novel.
