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, comes a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them.

In 1972, workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development when they unexpectedly discovered a skeleton at the bottom of a well. The skeleton's identity and how it ended up there were long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill—a dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows.

Chicken Hill was home to Moshe and Chona Ludlow, where Moshe integrated his theater and Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state sought to institutionalize a deaf boy, 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 conspired to keep the boy safe.

As the characters' stories intertwine and deepen, it becomes clear how much those living on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. The revelation of what truly happened on Chicken Hill and the role played by the town’s white establishment, McBride reveals that even in the darkest times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

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