The discovery of a body in 1979. What is a more classic mystery opening than a stray and unexpected corpse? Followed up, in this case, by a police visit to an old man who looks very much like the prime suspect? Category police drama anyone?
In The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has some other ideas. The passage about the discovery summarizes events that were genuinely mysterious to most of those involved back when the deceased was dropped in an abandoned well at Chicken Hill, a hardscrabble section of Pottstown, PA.
In 1932, Chicken Hill was home to the newer inhabitants of an increasingly industrialized town. Blacks fleeing the Jim Crow South and east European Jews fleeing pogroms scratch out mostly marginal lives with one eye on the unwelcoming forces of law and order.
Two of the more fortunate inhabitants are Moshe and and Chona Ludlow. He runs the local theater and has found considerable success booking Black as well as Yiddish musicians. She runs the grocery store that, with its generous credit, functions as a life line in the current hard times and gives her rapport with locals in the Black community, especially Nate and Addie Timblin.
The Timblins' struggle to keep a young, deaf relative out of the notorious orphan home enlists both Ludlows and provides a spine for the dramatic events of the novel. But even the genuinely gripping main plot line is only the armature for McBride's detailed portrait of the community, bursting with fully realized and fascinating characters.
Many are engaged in some dubious hustle, as Chicken Hill copes not only with poverty but with a lack of basic services. Even a water supply is tricky; health care is a dangerous gamble, and decent jobs are basically beyond the grasp of even competent people like the Timblins.
The 1920's and 30's saw a resurgence of the Klan, widespread anti-Semitism, and a deep suspicion of immigrants. This was true in the north as well as the south. The Depression only deepened those social ills and a fear amounting to hatred of those on the margins.
Success, or even survival, in Chicken Hill takes sharp wits, a sense of community, and a great deal of ingenuity, social, political and mechanical. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is a portrait of a community under stress: intelligent, but under educated and full of odd customs, superstitions, and rituals.
Is there a mystery in there, too? Certainly, with two bona fide villains, a contract killing, a fatal assault, and some high risk schemes involving the brotherhood of railroad workers. There is plenty going on but the novel takes some familiar mystery conventions and tropes and works them into a bigger picture.
This gives National Book Award winner McBride time to expand his characterizations and atmosphere, to indulge in some flights of fancy, and even to harken unto the supernatural. Some mystery fans may prefer a more streamlined plot. But I think most will be charmed by how some favorite devices are employed in this beautifully written and very accessible novel.
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Janice Law's The Falling Men, a novel with strong mystery elements, has been issued as an ebook on Amazon Kindle. Also on kindle: The Complete Madame Selina Stories.
The Man Who Met the Elf Queen, with two other fanciful short stories and 4 illustrations, is available from Apple Books.
The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations is available
