Good Night Thoughts
All Creatures Great & Small

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

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.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

More Non-Juvenile Books

  • In The Golem of Brooklyn, Len Bronstein, an art teacher with little knowledge of Judaism, accidentally brings a golem to life after stealing clay and getting high. As this nine-foot-six, Yiddish-speaking creature learns about contemporary crises, including the rise of white nationalism, it embodies the weight of Jewish history and trauma, prompting profound questions about humanity and identity.

    Read More about "The Golem of Brooklyn: A Novel"...

  • The House on Mango Street is a poignant coming-of-age novel that follows Esperanza Cordero as she navigates her childhood in Chicago, exploring her identity and aspirations. Through a series of beautifully crafted vignettes, Sandra Cisneros captures the essence of self-discovery and the importance of telling one's story, making it a cherished classic in American literature.

    Read More about "The House on Mango Street"...

  • The Hunter unfolds in a small Irish village where former Chicago PD officer Cal Hooper seeks peace but finds himself entangled in a conflict involving a reappearing father and a gold-seeking scheme. As Cal and his partner Lena strive to protect a troubled teenager from the looming threat, the lines between safeguarding and revenge blur, challenging their relationships and their morals.

    Read More about "The Hunter"...

  • Matt Daly’s lineage links back to Puritans from the early colonial period who helped set the course toward many of the destructive and shameful practices that Anglo-American culture has enacted on people and ecosystems around the world. The Invisible World strives to address this history, not to redress its wrongs, but at least to face them in the hope of making sense of how we might live beyond their influence. Exploring the writings of his ancestor, Matt saw an articulation of wildness as the habitat for evil. The American continent was cast as a place to be purged of its darkness. [...]