Drop-In Book Discussion: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, Facilitated by Jim Van Buskirk
Join us at this free and lively in-person discussion at the Jewish Community Library. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking on Pierce between Ellis and Eddy.
To register, click here. You may borrow a copy of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store at no charge through the Library’s Book Club in a Box program by contacting us at info@jewishcommunitylibrary.org.
About the book:
In 1972, when 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 neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater 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. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store received the 2023 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the Association of Jewish Libraries’ Jewish Fiction Award, and was named a Best Book of the Year by National Public Radio, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Time Magazine
About the facilitator:
Jim Van Buskirk is a retired librarian (San Francisco Public Library, Jewish Community Library) who currently works as a book group facilitator, writer, editor, public speaker, exhibit curator, and collections manager. He frequently writes articles and/or presents programs related to Jewish, literary, film, and/or queer history.