59 pages • 1 hour read
James McBrideThe Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Building Community Across Cultures
At its heart, McBride’s novel is about building community across cultures. The story is set in Chicken Hill, “a tiny area of ramshackle houses and dirt roads where the town’s blacks, Jews, and immigrant whites who couldn’t afford any better lived” (8). These diverse groups may share a neighborhood and financial struggles, but proximity alone cannot build solidarity. The relationships between Black people and Jewish people are impacted by Pottstown’s social hierarchy, which strongly favors white people. Many of Chicken Hill’s Jewish residents want social mobility and respectability, which, in Pottstown, are contingent on securing white approval.
Over time, most of the neighborhood’s Jewish residents and their businesses leave Chicken Hill once they can afford to relocate into town. Indeed, Moshe wishes to do the same, but Chona refuses to move because she sees service to diverse peoples as an essential part of her Jewish faith: “‘This area is poor. Which we are not. It is Negro. Which we are not. We are doing well!’ ‘Because we serve, you see? That is what we do. The Talmud says it. We must serve’” (27). The Jewish residents’ increasing proximity to whiteness and privilege strains their relationships with Chicken Hill’s Black community. This makes Chona’s decision to stay and keep the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store in Chicken Hill all the more meaningful.
Despite cross-cultural differences and tensions, many powerful friendships develop between characters from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Chona and Bernice Davis were childhood best friends. They rekindle their friendship after years of silence, and Bernice is at the hospital when Chona dies. Bernice’s brother, Fatty Davis, and Enzo “Big Soap” Carissimi, an immigrant from Sicily, “became fast friends” (85) for life. The duo have an important role in the plot because they open the well that Roberts falls into in Chapter 29. Addie and Chona are good friends, and Addie doesn’t hesitate to call out Reverend Spriggs for his hypocrisy and antisemitism when he speaks about Chona behind her back. In turn, Chona willingly takes in Addie’s nephew, Dodo, to protect and care for him.
Another key relationship is the one between Nate and Moshe. Nate is Moshe’s most dependable employee and his “best friend in town” (277). Their relationship deepens significantly when Nate entrusts the Ludlows with his nephew, “the one good secret that Nate had” (204). Chona and Dodo’s bond is arguably the most important intercultural relationship to the plot and theme of community. The boy becomes like a son to her, and the story shifts dramatically due to their valiant but ill-fated efforts to protect one another.
After Dodo is taken to Pennhurst, the white Monkey Pants helps him to stave off despair and seeks to defend him from Son of Man. The scene outside Chona’s hospital room in Chapter 18 speaks to the community she built at a time when intercultural relationships drew scorn and confusion: “They just stood uncomfortably as the odd clump of Americans they were: Jews and blacks, standing together” (225). Working together, Chona’s friends and their broader communities secure justice for her and Dodo. The plan to free the boy would not have succeeded without the cooperation of Black and Jewish individuals, making their success a victory for community and justice. While the murder mystery adds suspense and intrigue, the story’s main focus is how people from different backgrounds unite to create community and protect one another.
The Balance Between Mercy and Justice
McBride’s novel demonstrates that both mercy and justice are necessary, and characters seek to find a balance between the two. One of the story’s most merciful figures is Addie. She gives Nate “love and purpose” (360) after his time in prison, encourages him to forgive and forget the wrongs done to him, and reconciles with him in the epilogue. In Chapter 16, Addie expresses unconditional love for her husband even though she knows that he conceals his past from her: “I don’t care who you was, or what you done, or even what you calls yourself. I know your heart” (202). One of the most important acts of compassion and mercy in the novel is Chona and Moshe’s decision to offer Dodo sanctuary. In The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, mercy has the power to change hearts and lives.
Despite mercy’s importance, the need for justice remains. Indeed, defending the merciful is one reason why characters must take decisive action to secure justice. For example, Moshe’s gentleness causes Isaac to become his cousin’s “protector since their shared childhood in Europe” (22). In Pottstown, laws are structured to protect white privilege, so the novel’s Black and Jewish characters cannot expect justice from the legal system. This is especially true because the man who assaulted Chona and had Dodo institutionalized is one of Pottstown’s most prominent citizens. As a result, characters must rely on their own skills, resolve, and resources in the struggle for justice. As “Philadelphia’s biggest theater owner” (34), Isaac is able to leverage his connections and wealth to organize Dodo’s transportation to South Carolina, fund Dodo’s farm, and found Camp Chona.
For Nate, the fight for justice is far more hands-on. He becomes an avenger at age 13 when he kills his father, who murdered his mother. At the novel’s climax, Nate must take a life for the cause of justice once more: “And with that, he plunged the kitchen knife he held behind him in his right hand deep into Son of Man’s heart” (360). This violent act allows Nate to rescue his nephew from Pennhurst and also repays Son of Man for the atrocities he committed. Nate does not want to turn from the path of mercy Addie and Moshe have shown him, but he believes he is the only person capable of and willing to do what must be done to free Dodo. Characters like Isaac and Nate understand that justice sometimes demands personal action.
Karmic or divine justice is also at work in the novel. Doc Roberts’s demise is the culmination of a series of events and decisions that seem inconsequential or random when looked at individually. For example, he leaves his red costume on after the Memorial Day parade, which causes Henry Lit to mistake Roberts for his true target, Gus Plitzka. In addition, the doctor goes to the lot with the old well to dispose of the mezuzah he took from Chona, and he arrives at the well during the brief window when it is both open and unattended. These seemingly minor incidents become the gradual but inexorable work of divine justice.
Likewise, the people of Chicken Hill see divine justice in Hurricane Agnes, which wipes away Roberts’s remains and any possibility of a criminal investigation: “God took the whole business—the water well, the reservoir, the dairy, the skeleton, and every itty bitty thing they could’a used against them Jews—and washed it clear into the Manatawny Creek” (6). Although McBride's characters esteem mercy as a great virtue, they live in a world that demands justice from human and divine agents.
Survival and Recovery From the Past
Some of the novel’s central figures are survivors who must find ways to live with their difficult pasts. As boys, Moshe and his cousin, Isaac, flee from Bulgaria to the United States. The young refugees face terrible dangers and difficulties along the way, traveling “on foot for more than a thousand miles through the foot of the Carpathian Mountains and across Eastern Europe [...] dodging police and soldiers” (33). At times, the children had to steal to survive.
After reaching the United States, the cousins go on to become accomplished businessmen. However, they face tragedy again when Chona dies. Opening Camp Chona is part of how Moshe survives the loss of his wife and honors her memory: Together, Isaac and Moshe “create a camp in the Pennsylvania mountains for disabled children like [Dodo] called Camp Chona, a camp that lasted long after every one of those Jewish immigrants had died” (385). The narrator’s observation about the camp’s endurance speaks to the theme of survival by asserting that people’s good deeds can outlast their pain.
Another character who must recover from his troubled past is Nate Timblin, formerly known as Nate Love. At only 13 years old, he becomes “the last Love on Hemlock Row” when he kills his father for murdering his mother (359), and the orphan is “plunged [...] into a childhood of begging and stealing” (359). Eventually, Nate becomes a hired killer and serves a sentence in Graterford Prison. His wife, Addie, doesn’t know the details of his old life, but she still plays a vital role in his healing process: She “dipped her hand into the pool of injury and hurt that was his heart and drained it of every evil and refilled it with love and purpose” (359). To free his nephew, Nate kills again, unleashing the part of himself that he had sought to leave buried in the past.
Nate’s story ends on a hopeful note. In the epilogue, he returns to South Carolina, reunites with Addie, and enjoys a peaceful life. Dodo also finds healing in “the sight, smell, and feel of the beautiful Low Country” (385). After the horrors of Pennhurst, he gains his freedom and goes on to become the patriarch of a large and happy family. He survives and thrives in his new life as Nate Love II. Through the stories of Dodo, Moshe, and Nate, McBride shows that healing from the past is possible.
Related Titles
By James McBride
