In November, Boneyard Bookworms will read The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird. 

In this novel set in 1970s Pottstown, Pennsylvania, when workers 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. As the 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.

Laurel Hill’s book club reads a wide range of genres and topics–from historical nonfiction, memoirs, and contemporary novels to science, medicine, and humor–this club has something for everyone. For more information please contact programs@laurelhillphl.com. 

Thank you to Brown Brothers Harriman for generously sponsoring the Friends of Laurel Hill’s Fall Programming.