First sentence:
"There was an old Jew who lived at the site of the old synagogue up on Chicken Hill in the town of Pottstown, Pa., and when Pennsylvania State Troopers found the skeleton at the bottom of an old well of Hayes Street, the old Jew's house was the first place they went to."
Description:
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing development, the last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long-held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows.
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served he neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated he town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents--roused by Chona's kindness and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin--banded together to keep the boy safe.
As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town's establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community--heaven and earth--that ultimately sustains us." -- from the inside flap
My thoughts:
This is a very good book about community, compassion, strife and courage in facing adversity. I liked the characters - well most of them except for Doc and Gus Plizska. I especially liked Moshe and Chona and their relationship with Nate and Addie. I also liked how people worked together to help Dodo.
Date read: 4/26/2026
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4*/5
ISBN-10: 0593422945
ISBN-13: 9780593422946
Imprint: Riverhead Books
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Year: 2023
# of pages: 381
Binding: Hardcover
LibraryThing page
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