A story of community, racism, stigmas, and resilience.
In the town of Pottstown, PA, a story evolves of a town that has been marked by its population of Jews and Christians, blacks and whites, and those who are shunned due to a disability.
Moshe and Chona Ludlow are main characters. Moshe integrated his theater and Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. A young deaf boy is going to be institutionalized, but Chona and Nate Timblin, the janitor at Moshe’s theater and leader of the black community on Chicken Hill, decide to keep him safe. We learn of the reasons, and how they worked against biases. Meanwhile, the racist gets his due!
I found the story interesting, but I thought the author's note was the most inspiring! ( )

Liked it, didn't love it. Characters, and keeping track of all of them, was an issue for me. I didn't really identify with any of them except maybe Chona. The beginning, and ending, which bring the whole thing whole circle, were a bit confusing to me.
Moshe and Chona run the Heaven and Earth Grocery store, and Moshe also owns and operates a local theater/dance hall, where both Jewish and Black musicians perform. They help their neighbors, Nate and Addie hide their deaf nephew Dodo from the "state" who believe the boy needs to be institutionalized.
Race relations, and prejudice are a big part of the story. I did particularly like the relationships between the Jews and the Black people, who were often friendly and helpful to each other, but never really "understood" the others. ( )

This book is set in a small town in Pennsylvania in the 1930s and focuses on the Black and Jewish communities in that town. The Jewish community is generally upwardly-mobile, but one Jewish couple, Moishe and Chona, stay in the Black neighborhood, where he runs a music theater that often caters to a Black audience, and she runs the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, which never turns a profit but is a community hub thanks to Chona's deep care for her neighbors. Chona takes in a Black boy who has been rendered deaf and orphaned by an exploding stove accident, which creates trouble when white authorities want to put the boy in a mental institution.

McBride's writing is witty and delightful. The characters are vivid, and most of them are very lovable. He often goes on long tangents: when a new character is introduced, he'll tell that character's entire life story. These tangents might be frustrating if they weren't all well-written, and the extra detail about the characters adds a lot of depth to their interactions. The characters might suffer from disability, poverty, and racism, but they make up for it with love and care so that the book is ultimately hopeful. ( )

The setting is Chicken Hill, a neighborhood in Pottstown, PA that is populated by Negros, Jews, and European immigrants. Set during the mid-twentieth century the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is run by Chona, a good hearted soul who allows credit, forgives debt, and makes no earnings for the grocery store. Her husband, Moshe, runs a dance hall that is integrated and brings in dance bands which are touring the country. Nate is Moshe's right hand man and his wife Addie helps with the grocery store and helps Chona who is disabled from childhood polio.

Nate and Addie assume responsibility for nephew, Dodo, who is deaf from the explosion of a stove, when his mother dies. Dodo comes to the attention of state authorities who want to put him in a residential home. The rest of the book revolves around the characters (many of them with more than one name) of Chicken Hill trying to conceal Dodo from the authorities, then working to free him from the residential school once he is captured.

It took me about half way through the book to get engaged with the story because there were so many characters and so many back stories. The story is populated with people who are marginalized by society in general and who ban together to work for the greater good of one another, though they sometimes have their own sense of justice. ( )

In the Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, PA, Jews and Blacks live in relative peace and harmony, above the largely white town below. Conflict comes when Nate and Addie ask Chona and Moshe to help them hide their nephew, Dodo, who is an orphan and mostly deaf after an accident with an exploding stove. The state wants to put him in Pennhurst, a "special school" or hell on earth, depending who's talking. Moshe and Chona do help - as does their neighbor Bernice, who slips Dodo in with her own kids when the state agent comes - but when white supremacist Doc Roberts assaults Chona, Dodo leaps at him, leading to his capture and institutionalization. Then, many in town work together to break him free - a complicated venture using bits of knowledge from different people woven together into a web, each with different debts and loyalties.

Inspired by Sy Friend and Bob Arch, and the Variety Club Camp for Handicapped Children in Worcester, PA.

Quotes

"Our ways give comfort rather than cause sorrow." (Malachi to Moshe, 64)

"We are integrating into a burning house." (Malachi to Moshe, 71)

He'd come as a matter of conscience but now was a matter of love. (107)

Isn't that what Judaism should do, bring light and reflection between cultures? (107)

"You can't right every wrong in the world." (Nate to Addie, 199)

"You can forever remember the wrongs done to you as long as you live....But if you forget 'em and go on living, it's almost as good as forgiving." (Addie to Nate, 201)

She felt the prayer more than heard it; it started from somewhere deep down and fluttered toward her head like tiny flecks of light, tiny beacons moving like a school of fish, continually swimming away from a darkness that threatened to swallow them. (Chona, 218)

There was nothing to do but talk, which at times like these is all that's left. (223)

"The law in this land is what the white man says it is, mister." (Nate to Isaac, 281)

"What do we owe each other on this Hill, Bernice?" (Fatty, 290) ( )