A review by jedore
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

“The difference was that the white man in the South spoke his hatred in clear, clean, concise terms, whereas the white man in the new country hid his hatred behind stories of wisdom and bravado, with false smiles of sincerity and stories of Jesus Christ and other nonsense that he tossed about like confetti in the Pottstown parade.”

Set in a small Pennsylvania town in the 1930s, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store dives into the lives of its Black and Jewish residents. The story kicks off when a skeleton is discovered in a well decades later, unraveling a tale of love, community, and defiance in the face of oppression. At the center is the grocery store, run by a Jewish woman whose compassion ties the community together in unexpected ways. 

Fun facts: James McBride is not just an award-winning author but also a talented musician and composer. He also won the National Book Award for The Good Lord Bird. 

Historical fiction is my favorite genre and this one was a unique story about a time and place I hadn’t read much about before. The story shines a light on a lot of struggles and triumphs of black and Jewish people in the earlier part of the 20th century. It's worth a read, but it’s not an easy one to get through. 

There are a lot of characters in this book. Just when I started to connect with one, the story would jump to someone else—or back to a character I’d already forgotten about. It made it hard to feel emotionally invested in the story, which is something I usually look for in a book. 

The plot bounces around as much as the characters do. The disjointed structure made it hard to stay engaged. Honestly, if McBride had focused on just one or two main characters, this could have been a much more powerful read. 

So, I recommend it to more patient readers who are willing to be challenged—it’s ambitious and rich in detail, but the scattered storytelling and character overload might leave you feeling more intrigued than moved.