September Book Club

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87104414597?pwd=YwaaBEElDKi2qYErVbaLVCurEmkapS.1

Join us for a lively discussion on our September book, "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store" by James McBride. We suggest reading the suggested book beforehand to participate fully + share your thoughts and additional book recommendations with the group. All are welcome at these fun convos! This book club is sure to keep you entertained with our robust conversations. 4pm AZ time, open to all!

About the Book:

“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them

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.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

Not normally a "book club person"? Join us anyways! This is a first book club for some of us, while others are seasoned pro's and all are loving our conversations and the diverse books we are reading! Conversations are expertly lead by our book club ambassador Margaret Stephens-Reed who always has great suggestions and keeps us moving during our 60 minutes together. A great way to kick off your weekend!

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87104414597?pwd=YwaaBEElDKi2qYErVbaLVCurEmkapS.1