The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023--San Antonio

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride proved to be thought-provoking in terms of the discrimination that minorities--racial and handicapped--face and have always faced in America.  Set in a small city in Pennsylvania in the 1930s, when vaudeville was still alive. the main characters are mostly among the Blacks who have moved north from the south and the Jews who who have migrated there from various parts of Eastern Europe.  Some of these live in a mixed (Black and Jewish) neighborhood apart from the main town--an area ignored in terms of city services with dirt streets, water only from a public pump, etc.  It is the type of area where redlining was used at that time too keep the undesirables of society forced without special sections of a city.  For the most part, the Jews and the Blacks are friendly with each other and disliked by everyone else.  They have learned to take care of their own with as little interaction as possible with the police and the main families of the city (other than working for them as maids, drivers, laundresses, etc.)  The first half of the book establishes these relationships and what life is like, in general, in the town.  It's the second half of the book where certain characters come alive and grab our attention: the 12-year-old Black boy and the childless couple who informally adopt him when his mother dies in a stove explosion that makes him deaf and temporarily blind, the Jewish theater owner and his wife runs runs the grocery store that serves the community, the woman who is called "Paper" because she provides the news of everything happening in the community to all those who will listen to her, the adult brother and sister who don't talk with each other over long-held grievances, etc.  Then in the last quarter of the book, there is the most interesting character, a young boy who suffers from cerebral palsy and has been abandoned by his family to live in a state hospital for the mental patients; I dare any reader not to fall in love with him!  It's a fascinating book.  I gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.