Day 1,454, Quasi-Quarantine: Unlikely Alliances And Faint Hope In The Darkness Propel "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store"

"You can forever remember the wrongs done to you as long as you live," she said. "But if you forget 'em and go on living, it's almost as good as forgiving. I don't care who you was, or what you done, or even what you calls yourself. I know your heart."

James McBride weaves a stunning tale of culture clashes in 1930s Pennsylvania in "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store," with his working-class melting pot joining forces to free the wronged, punish the guilty, and carve out hope in a bleak landscape. 

"He was a man without a country living in a world of ghosts, for having no country meant no involvement and not caring for a thing beyond your own heart and head, and ghosts and spirits were the only thing certain in a world where your existence was invisible."

You'll find yourself swept up in the neighborhood of Chona, Nate, Moshe, Big Soap, Dodo, Addie, Fatty, and others, rooting for justice with a surprising intensity.

As a minor nit, there were a few incidents in the book that were glossed over or not explained well that were central to the plot. What actually happened becomes more apparent as the story progresses, but some initial confusion is possible on the reader's part.

"It was a future they couldn't quite see, where the richness of all they had brought to the great land of promise would one day be zapped into nothing, the glorious tapestry of their history boiled down to a series of ten-second TV commercials, empty holidays, and sports games filled with the patriotic fluff of red, white, and blue, the celebrants cheering the accompanying dazzle without any idea of the horrible struggles and proud pasts of their forebears who had made their lives so easy."

"The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store" is a many-layered feat of storytelling, setting heartbreak against retribution, depression against joy, and prejudice against shared values.

"The difference was that the white man in the South spoke his hatred in clear, clean, concise terms, whereas the white man in the new country hid his hatred behind stories of wisdom and bravado, with false smiles of sincerity and stories of Jesus Christ and other nonsense that he tossed about like confetti in the Pottstown parade."