Book Club

Wednesday, May 1

6:30 pm at church

We’ll be reading “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store: A Novel” by 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 & how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews & African Americans lived side by side & shared ambitions & sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe & Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater & where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona & Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater & the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters’ stories overlap & deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle & what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill & the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love & community—heaven & earth—that sustain us.” We hope that you will join us for some exciting discussion, fellowship & dessert.