THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE, by James McBride
A couple of weeks ago, while I was working on this review, my fiancé and I visited the Guggenheim. This time, the exhibition caught our attention was “Measuring Infinity,” a fascinating retrospective on the renowned Venezuelan artist Gego. Gego, a German Jew who escaped Nazi persecution, settled in Venezuela in 1939 and went on to become one of the most influential Latin American artists of the 20th century. Her artwork reflects a profound curiosity about the interconnectedness of shapes, objects, and the dimensions that arise from these relationships.
Perhaps it was her fixation on structure and connectivity, which to me signifies the essence of community, or maybe it was the grandeur of Gego’s wire galaxy of lines and points that impressed me. Regardless, as I stood amidst her artwork, I couldn’t help but turn to my fiancé and utter, “The book I’m currently reading is just like this.” His response was, “Well, then it must be extraordinary as well.” And he couldn’t have been more accurate. “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” the latest novel by the critically acclaimed and award-winning author James McBride, possesses the same precision, magnitude, and necessary chaos present in Gego’s inspired structures.
This book cleverly combines elements of a murder mystery with those of a Great American Novel. The narrative begins in 1972 when a skeleton is discovered in a well in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The identity of the corpse remains unknown, but a belt buckle, a pendant, and a mezuzah found at the scene lead authorities to question the only remaining Jewish resident from the once thriving Jewish community. However, instead of solely exploring the mystery, the novel diverts its focus to the 1920s and ’30s, back to Chicken Hill, the neighborhood in Pottstown where Jewish, Black, and immigrant individuals reside. It is a community bound together by bonds of love and duty, and it is within this setting that McBride’s epic tale truly takes flight.
Our initial encounter is with Moshe Ludlow, a Romanian Jew who owns the local theater and dance hall, and his wife, Chona, a strong-willed and compassionate American-born Jew who manages the grocery store that gives the book its title. The grocery store is more of a financial burden for Moshe and Chona, as they allow numerous Black and European immigrant residents of Chicken Hill to have lines of credit without expecting repayment. As the story unfolds, we observe Moshe and Chona from their respective positions, witnessing the ever-growing diversity of their community: Moshe through his theater and Chona, whose health gradually deteriorates, from the store.
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