**JOIN NIBC FOR A DISCUSSION WED. FEBRUARY 28TH, 2024!

Our February book selection is “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride.

The book was published in 2023.  From the author of Deacon King Kong and National Book Award winner The Good Lord Bird comes a gorgeous novel about a small town and the bonds of community that are formed between marginalized groups in order to survive.

Synopsis from the bookseller:

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

You do not have to be an NIBC member to join in our discussions. We invite all readers to take part at 7 PM on Wednesday, Feb. 28th, on the 3rd floor.

LAST MONTH’S READ

In January, we read “All Systems Red” by Martha Wells; the book was published in 2017.  It is the first book in the Murderbot Diaries series. The series is about a cyborg named “Murderbot” who is designed to protect humans during a research mission. The cyborg narrates the story.

If you missed out on this read and want to know more about the book, check out this video interview with the author:

NIBC is a UU-style, open-to-all gathering & discussion group of bibliophiles who appreciate a wide genre of reads, from history to true crime. They meet at 6 p.m. on the fourth Wednesday of each month.
Contact: Jannie Marvel. Email: at nibc@c-vuu.org

And for more book talk, try out the Facebook group CVUU’s Bookworms. It’s a private group on Facebook, set up in January 2020 to share news of CVUU’s two book clubs, The Novel Ideas Book Club and the CVUU Book Lovers.

JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP!

If book clubs are not your thing, but books are, you do not have to be a member of either book club to join the group! The page is chock-full of book talk and fellowship outside of scheduled reads and news of meetups.  

Find them on Facebook and request to join by clicking here: CVUU’S BOOKWORMS