Coming up at the Thursday, Feb. 22 meeting of the Book Circle, at 3 p.m. on Zoom, is a discussion about what happened on Chicken Hill, as related by James McBride in his bestselling National Book Award-winning novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.

            In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, PA, were digging the foundations for a new development, they found a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there are two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans live side by side and share ambitions and sorrows.

When the truth is finally revealed, we see that love and community — heaven and earth — sustain us.