The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

(Paperback)

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Description

The new novel from the bestselling, National Book Award-winning, Oprah Book Club-picked, Barack Obama favourite James McBride.

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 neighbourhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.

As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins 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.

Reviews

McBride's pages burst with life . . . This endlessly rich saga highlights the different ways in which people look out for one another * Publishers Weekly *
The interlocking destinies of McBride's characters make for tense, absorbing drama and, at times, warm, humane comedy. . . If it's possible for America to have a poet laureate, why can't James McBride be its storyteller-in-chief * Kirkus, Starred Review *
McBride entertains us and shows us both the beauty and the ugliness of humanity * NPR *
Shouldn't we just get it over with and declare McBride this decade's Great American Novelist * Los Angeles Times *
McBride is an acknowledged master of high-resolution historical fiction, peppered with wit and insight * Goodreads *
Funny, tender, knockabout, gritty and suspenseful, McBride's microcosmic, socially critiquing and empathic novel dynamically celebrates difference, kindness, ingenuity and the force that compels us to move heaven and earth to help each other * Booklist *
It's hard to imagine anyone being able to write to the caliber of Toni Morrison and Edward P. Jones, but James McBride does just that * Dallas Morning News *
A modern-day Mark Twain * New York Times Book Review *

Author Bio

James McBride is the author of the New York Times-bestselling Oprah's Book Club selection Deacon King Kong, the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, the million-copy-bestselling memoir The Colour of Water, the novels Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, the story collection Five-Carat Soul, and Kill 'Em and Leave, a biography of James Brown. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal and an accomplished musician, McBride is also a distinguished writer in residence at New York University.