The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

What an amazing voice this author has!! I can't believe how real his Jewish and Black characters sound.

This is a fantastic tale that revolves around a deaf orphan, but he barely has a part. It's really the story of a several communities, all outside of White society which must rely on each other, no matter how much they dislike that idea.

The tale starts with Moshe's music theater, recounting all the great acts he books in the early 1920. Moshe is a Jewish immigrant who ends up living on Chicken Hill, a neighborhood of mostly Black inhabitants. Most of the Jewish residents left, but Moshe's wife, Chona, insists they stay. She runs the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store for mostly Black clientele.

Moshe employs Nate to keep his theater running. Nate has a checkered past that he keeps from everyone, even his wife Addie. They take in a deaf/mute nephew, but turn the child over to Chona for safe keeping when the state authorities find out the child is with Nate & Addie.

The crooked doctor, the scheming characters Fatty, Big Soap, and Paper, the Jewish temple's water problem, Bullis the egg man, the Pennhurst Sanitorium, and a loan shark, all have a hand in making this complex tale come to life. I couldn't it put down.