James McBride

Fiction 2023 | 400 pages

What a rich book this is!  The characters have purpose, meaning, and personality.  The setting is the small town of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in the late 1920's and 1930's.  This is a time and a town where Jews, Negroes, and White Christians led lives, isolated in their cultural groups, and yet thrown together by circumstance.  This is a time of discrimination, assumption, bigotry.

Our main characters are Chona and Moshe, a Jewish married couple.  Chona is the kindest, most generous woman you'd want to meet.  She runs the Heaven and Earth Grocery store, and cares also for the second floor, which is where Chona and Moshe live.  She treats Jews, Negroes, and Christians alike, with the same compassion and fairness. She lets her neighbors buy on credit, which is seldom repaid.  She lets the children buy candy with marbles, which rotate through the community of Pottstown, and the same marble purchases multiple bits of candy over time.  The Grocery is always in the red.  Moshe, quiet and self-contained, who runs two theaters in town, as well as creating income from other sources, introduces the music of these multiple cultures to the residents of Pottstown, and, in his own way, does his part to break down cultural barriers and build understanding and respect.

Chona becomes very ill, which plays a large part in this book.  They also take DoDo into their home, a black hearing-impaired orphan, which serves to unite the community when the government takes him away and moves him to an asylum for lunatics.  At 12 years old, Dodo is a fascinating character who has much to teach us.

There are other well developed and interesting characters in this astute book that explores race, poverty, bias, and history.  McBride gives us much to ponder.  Yes, I recommend this book, unequivocally.

April 2024