Lowcountry Reads aims to bring our community together by reading a selected book chosen to spark discussion and promote cross-cultural understanding. The 2024 Lowcountry Reads book selection is The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by National Book Award winner James McBride. On Wednesday, November 20, from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., the Lowcountry Coalition Against Hate will host a free community conversation about McBride’s novel at the Hilton Head Branch Library (11 Beach City Road), moderated by Dr. Raymond Cox and assisted by youth moderator Patrick Good. This special literary event is part of the annual Crescendo arts festival and presented in collaboration with the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center and DAYLO: Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization.
About The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
A New York Times Notable Book |
A New York Times Readers Pick for 100 Best Books of the 21st Century | Winner of the 2024 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction | From one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2024 | Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and Time Magazine
“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —The New York Times Book Review
“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.” —The Washington Post
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, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them.
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.
About the Host
Established in 2018, the Lowcountry Coalition Against Hate (LCAH) is a non-partisan alliance of organizations and individuals in the Lowcountry who believe that promoting civil discourse, educating our communities about the destructive effects of hate speech, and modeling effective communication among disparate groups will strengthen our communities and each other. in addition, the LCAH serves as an advocate for public policies which will better address our statewide issues around diversity. https://lowcountryagainsthate.org
