The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

McBride (Deacon King Kong) opens his latest novel in 1972 with the discovery of an unidentified skeleton in Pottstown, PA. The mystery of who the deceased might have been slowly unweaves through flashbacks to the 1920s and 1930s. Married Jewish couple Moshe and Chona own and live above the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store in the American melting pot of Pottstown’s Chicken Hill neighborhood. Moshe manages the town’s recently desegregated theater. He aspires to move to a more prosperous area, but Chona won’t stand for it because of her love for the store’s regulars. When a local deaf Black orphan named Dodo, whom Chona helps protect, is institutionalized by the state, the community is galvanized to rescue him, and the mystery of the skeleton is revealed. McBride fleshes out the nuances of community life with characters richly portrayed by narrator Dominic Hoffman, who competently recreates the various dialects of the town and individualizes each person in this character-driven novel.