Book Club

The Book for October  is: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (400 Pages) (bestseller list) In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

We hope you will join us in person or on Zoom. You don’t have to read the book or finish it to participate.

 Margaret will be hosting, in Buda.  Join us at 7 pm for socializing and snacks.

The discussion will begin at 7:30 in person and on Zoom:  COMPUTER: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89454689631?pwd=blE3Q1V6K2JwZUM1bnhLTWIzSG02QT09
 PHONE: 346 248 7799 Meeting ID: 894 5468 9631  Passcode: 613878