Our Book Club
Our next books:
| Title | Author | Meeting date and time |
| The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store | James McBride | January 22, 2025, 7:30 pm |
| Nightingale | Kristin Hannah | February 26, 2025, 7:30 pm |
| Mazel | Rebecca Goldstein | March 26, 2025, 7:30 pm |
| The Book Spy | Alan Hlad | April 23, 2025 7:30 pm |
| Florence Adler Swims Forever | Rachel Beanland | May 21, 2025 7:30 pm |
| Held | Anne Michaels | June 25, 2025, 7:30 pm |
| The House is on Fire | Rachel Beanland | September 2025, 7:30 pm (TBD) |
| The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century | David Laskin | Oct., 2025 (TBD) |
Scheduled every month on the Fourth Wed, until Jan 22, 2025 at 7:30: (Well, November 20 and December 18 are the third Wednesday because of holidays in the fourth week.)
Books that we already read:
| Title | Author | Meeting date |
| The Art Forger |
Barbara A. Shapiro | April 26, 2023 |
| All About Me | Mel Brooks | May 24, 2023 |
| We Were the Lucky Ones | Georgia Hunter | June 28, 2023 |
| The Weight of Ink | Rachel Kadish | September 27, 2023 |
| Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow | Gabrielle Zevin | October 25, 2023 |
| The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville |
Clare Mulley | December 27, 2023 |
| The Matchmakers Gift | Lynda Cohen Loigman | January 24, 2024 |
| The Dressmakers of Auschwitz | Lucy Adlington | February 28, 2024 |
| Madam | Debbie Applegate | May 1 , 2024, 7:30 pm |
| The Storyteller | Jodi Picoult | May 22, 2024, 7:30 pm |
| This Magnificent Dappled Sea | David Biro | June 26, 2024, 7:30 pm |
| Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker | Barry Sonnenfeld | September 25, 2024, 7:30 pm |
| Song Yet Sung | James McBride | October 23, 2024, 7:30 pm |
| Moonflower Murders: A Novel | Anthony Horowitz | December 4, 2024, 7:30 pm |
Book Club Meeting
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
by James McBride
Wednesday, December 18, 2024 at 7:30 PM
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, 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. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, 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 worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these 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.
Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.
Let us know if you have other titles to recommend written by Jewish authors or are about Jewish content.
Books are available in the public library, and on Amazon, eBay, etc. Check our website for the comprehensive list of future book club titles.
Please RSVP to membership@jgasgp.org if you want to be on our book club list.