The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store opens with a mystery that quietly disappears into the background of the story. We are told upfront that workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, digging the foundation for a new housing development, have uncovered a skeleton. But the one person who may know anything about it disappears after being questioned by police. For the most part, this is inconsequential as the story skips back in time to the early days of the Jewish and Black residents who shared their lives on Chicken Hill, the neighbourhood adjacent to the wealthier, white part of Pottstown.
This is a lively, winding tale of Chona and Moshe, who own the grocery store, and their kindness towards their neighbours. It’s a story of race, religion and history, with an eclectic mix of characters. Addie and Nate, a Black couple, are Chona’s closest friends. Dodo is their nephew, who Chona hides from the authorities who want to send him to a special school for the deaf (but it’s really a dreadful asylum) . There’s also Malachi the dancer, Fatty, and Big Soap (an Italian immigrant who’s friends with Fatty), Rusty, Irv and Marv the Jewish Lithuanian shoemaker twins, and Doc Roberts whose deep-seated racism affects them all.
The general idea of America as a melting pot is challenged throughout the novel. One of the musicians speaking to Moshe, who owns the grocery but also a theatre, has this to say when Moshe says, “I didn’t know there were so many Spanish people around here.”
Mario smiled. “To you, they’re Spanish. To me, they’re Puerto Rican, Dominican, Panamanian, Cuban, Ecuadorian, Mexican, Africano, Afro-Cubano. A lot of different things. A lot of different sounds mixed together.”
The backstories of these Pottstown residents are presented in clever ways—and you understand the struggles between immigrant communities since the German Jews have different values than the Romanian, Hungarian, or Polish Jews; and the Blacks from the South likewise have different experiences and practices—but the overarching story is that of Chona and how she sees the good in people and pushes past their emotional barriers. She helps when others turn away, and when injustice is done to her, the community steps up.