James McBride is an American treasure, a fiction writer par excellence, who seems to know exactly how to couch political and social sore spots amidst his conversational prose and wonderful characters. There are so many voices, so many sounds, so much to say and do, that his books are like teeming apartment building complexes. His latest novel, THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE, is no exception.

Like Philip Roth’s Newark, New Jersey, McBride’s Pottstown, Pennsylvania, is full of remarkable people with unique, truly original lives and backgrounds. In 1972, Moshe and Chona Ludlow run the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store in their Chicken Hill neighborhood. Moshe is a Romanian immigrant who integrated the first dance hall in town, and Chona kindly fed everyone.

"THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE is a full course of a literary meal.... McBride has a talent for finding the humor in something that we normally wouldn't laugh at, and we don’t feel bad for enjoying it."

Eventually, the PA government comes looking for a deaf Black boy, claiming that he needs to be institutionalized. The residents come together to ensure his protection and keep him in Chicken Hill. However, white Christian Americans fight back at the mixed community, and therein lies the focus of the plot. The boy, a skeleton dug up when the state begins building new housing developments, and the travails that bring up some terrible old truths create a stew of drama and comedy that only McBride could produce.

THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE is a full course of a literary meal. The voices of the characters are so specific to each of them that readers feel as if they are meeting a brand-new, real-life person each time, and their quirks live well beyond these pages. Besides humor, there is actually an ending that celebrates unity, love and togetherness in a world where those things are no longer givens.

McBride has said in interviews that he was thinking about Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, inhabited only by white Christians, and how its homogeneity was so strange to him. He has spoken about small towns, where your neighbor is an integral part of the community. “Hate takes work and energy,” McBride said. “Hate is national. Love is local. Keep love local and let it spread.” That is the motto of Chicken Hill, or so it seems to be. But this neighborhood has a reason to band all of its diverse residents together.

THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE surely will be slated for a long-form series on a streaming service near you. The cacophony of the lives, loves and secrets of this wide-reaching tale about a small town and its scandals would be equal parts hilarious and touching. McBride has a talent for finding the humor in something that we normally wouldn't laugh at, and we don’t feel bad for enjoying it.

While not exactly a beach read (it’s hard to pull yourself out of it long enough to go swimming or look for sea glass), it will transport you to a different time and release you from the headaches of 2023. And it will become the book that everyone will be reading all year long.