I was so disappointed with The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. It’s the author who, a few years ago, wrote The Good Lord Bird and Deacon King Kong (both of  which I read and very much enjoyed) The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was supposedly pretty good, according to the reviews and a couple friends,  but when I went to read it I just got too tired to follow all the characters and kept going back to sleep. I may have been a bit sick.  

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store 
by James Mcbride 
2023 / 
Read by Dominic Hoffman `12h 21m
Rating – 7.5? / gen fiction

The Plot:   In 1972, a skeleton was found at the bottom of a well in a neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.  There are a few clues about whose skeleton it  is so the police start questioning an older Jewish man named Malachi who resides in a neighborhood synagogue.

So then the story flips back in time to the 1920s and 1930s when the neighborhood was somewhat different and in the 1920s and ’30s it was called Chicken Hill and was very much alive with Blacks and Jews with a smattering of Whites. An orphaned black boy is found and turns out to be blind as well.  He’s kept by two Black adult friends until the Jewish couple who happen to be business owners promise to keep him away from Doc Roberts, the KKK guy who is in some kind of a tangle with the entrepreneurs.  It seemed to me there were  lots of these relationships to keep track of and I just got tired.  

The website http://www.chickenhillnc.com/gallery.htm#:~:text=Chicken Hill%2C situated just west,a group of local businessmen is a great start on this.  

I’m rating this on the basis of the word smithery and the ambiance. McBride is a talented guy giving the theme of love where you are a bit of lightness.It seems like it should be an absolutely wonderful book – ????