2 good books

Small Things Like These | The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2020)

Bill Furlong spends his days delivering coal to the residents of a small Irish town. At home, he has a wife and five daughters. They have ordinary troubles, but enough to put food on the table, and as the sun of an unwed mother, Bill knows it’s miracle enough to have ended up so fortunate.

Bill is a good man, and one day, during a delivery to the local convent, he discovers something that doesn’t sit right with him, something that if he is to say something, could cause him and his family a lot of trouble in their little town.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (2023)

Chicken Hill is a ramshackle neighborhood on the outskirts of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where a predominantly Jewish and Black community cobble together a living. At the center of neighborhood is the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, run by Chona, the daughter of a rabbi, who’s married to Moshe, the proprietor of a concert hall who has radically opened his doors to Black patrons.

Chona is known throughout the town for her willingness to stand up for her neighbors, whether by extending credit at the store or by publicly exposing the prominent white businessmen who march in the annual KKK parade. When a recently-orphaned deaf Black boy is at risk of being scooped up by some of the same people and placed in inadequate government care, she doesn’t hesitate to volunteer to hide him away. It’s in this plot to save the boy that all of the characters of Chicken Hill (would it be a James McBride novel without an ensemble cast like Dodo, Monkey Pants, Fatty, and Paper?) take some risks to do what’s right by their neighbors.