Photo courtesy of Penguin Random House via Wikimedia Commons.
By Mira Crane ’27
Contributing Writer
How does a small town end up with a body in a well? That is the question answered in the novel “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” published on Aug. 8, 2023. In the book, author James McBride examines how a working-class community of Jewish and African American people are affected by antisemitism and racism from the white, Christian community around them in similar and different ways. McBride also explores how these groups might be able to bridge the divides between them.
The story centers the Jewish owners of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Moshe and Chona Ludlow, and Nate Timblin, an unofficial town leader of the Black community along with his wife Addie. The book also follows some of the other African American and Jewish people living in the small town of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Moshe, who owns a performance space, decides to cater to the African American community and engage Black performers, despite protests from the town’s white citizens. Chona becomes beloved in the town's African American community for speaking out against discrimination, keeping the doors of her grocery store open to the community and always being willing to help them as needed. This creates most of the action in the novel, as Chona works with Nate to hide Nate’s nephew Dodo from the authorities who want to send him to an institution due to his deafness.
McBride avoids painting either the African American or Jewish community as homogenous, both in the diversity of points of view, which he does by following characters from both communities and drawing contrasts between the Jews who stayed in Pottstown and those who moved to larger cities. McBride also distinguishes the African Americans who live in a part of Pottstown called Chicken Hill from a different group, called the Lowgods, who are from a different area of the South and explores how they both interact differently with the white community. The different characters from all of these communities that the book expands upon are also interesting and memorable, and all of them have story arcs that make them complex, interesting characters.
The novel’s narration is poignant and occasionally humorous, making the reader sympathetic to the characters' plights without getting too dark. The narration opens with the mystery of a body being discovered in the town well, heightening the desire to understand the dynamics of the town and how the death could have happened. McBride also emphasizes community more than any particular character, but the reader does not miss a deep dive into the characters’ psyches thanks to the thrilling mystery and the revelations between the African American and Jewish communities. This complex observation of community immerses the reader in the story's world.
However, the book also examines a community that no longer exists. Readers find out in the book’s prologue that a hurricane destroyed the town soon after the body was discovered in the well, so we know from the beginning that the characters we are being introduced to no longer live in the town. Even so, and this is arguably the point of the story. The way the marginalized communities of the town are brought together and the different connections we see that go beyond group divides demonstrate a path for how we might live and work for change today.
The book has direct references to the modern day and our current political polarization that feel unnecessary, but, luckily, they are relatively few and easy to pass over, so they don’t distract from the story. All in all, “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” is a well written novel and a wonderful study of the inner workings of a town. Other books by James McBride include The Good Lord Bird, Deacon King Kong, and his memoir The Color of Water.