Notes

James McBride.
Heaven and Earth grocery store
385 pages.

Summary: 1972 -- workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighbourhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. 1930s -- In Chicken Hill, Moshe and Chona Ludlow operate the theatre and the Heaven & Earth grocery store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalise him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theatre and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. (Publisher)