Meeting location change beginning in July 2025! Due to Eola Road Branch renovations\, the Griot Book Discussion will meet in person at the Santori Library\, 3rd floor Quiet Reading Room unti l further notice.
\nAttend in person at Santori Library or virtually via Zoom. Print copies of the book are available for checkout at the Eola Road Branch Adult Reference Desk on the 2nd floor and at the Santori Libr ary\, 3rd floor. Email group facilitator Becky Clark at \;rclark@aurorapubliclibrary.org&nbs p\;for more information.
\n\nBook description:
\nThe H eaven &\; Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
\nIn 1972\, w hen workers in Pottstown\, Pennsylvania\, were digging the foundations for a new development\, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton a t 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 dila pidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans live d side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Mo she and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Cho na ran the Heaven &\; Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him\, it was Chona and Nate Timblin\, t he Black janitor at Moshe&rsquo\;s theater and the unofficial leader of th e Black community on Chicken Hill\, who worked together to keep the boy sa fe. As these characters&rsquo\; stories overlap and deepen\, it becomes cl ear how much the people who live on the margins of white\, Christian Ameri ca struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally re vealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town&rsquo\;s white establishment played in it\, McBride shows us that even in dark time s\, it is love and community&mdash\;heaven and earth&mdash\;that sustain u s. (publisher description)
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