Readers’ Circle : The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

For January we will be discussing the award winning novel, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was released in 2023 to critical success. It tells the story of Black and Jewish residents of the Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in the 1920s and ’30s. McBride won the Kirkus Prize for the novel in 2023.

“It’s June 1972, and the Pennsylvania State Police have some questions concerning a skeleton found at the bottom of an old well in the ramshackle Chicken Hill section of Pottstown that’s been marked for redevelopment. But Hurricane Agnes intervenes by washing away the skeleton and all other physical evidence of a series of extraordinary events that began more than 40 years earlier, when Jewish and African American citizens shared lives, hopes, and heartbreak in that same neighborhood.” Kirkus

Reader’s Circle meets the last Thursday of the month in the Library. It is a drop in book discussion group open to all Merrill Memorial Library cardholders. Copies of the selections may be borrowed from the Library or requested through Minerva if the libraries copy is unavailable.

Questions about Readers’ Circle can be emailed to Courtney at ckleftis@yarmouthlibrary.org.