Read It & Eat Book Club – Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

It's June 1972, and the Pennsylvania State Police have some questions concerning a skeleton found at the bottom of an old well in Pottstown. But Hurricane Agnes intervenes by washing away the skeleton and all other physical evidence of a series of extraordinary events that began more than 40 years earlier, when Jewish and African American citizens shared lives, hopes, and heartbreak in that same neighborhood. At the literal and figurative heart of these events is Chona Ludlow, the compassionate Jewish proprietor of the novel’s eponymous grocery store. When Nate and Addie Tamblin, who are Black, approach Chona and her husband Moshe for help keeping their nephew, Dodo, from becoming a ward of the state, Chona doesn’t hesitate to open her home to hide the boy from the authorities. This rich saga highlights the different ways in which people look out for one another. Check out this title at hpl.pub/catalog. The event will be at Urban Cookhouse.