NOTE: When I review I book I listened to, I can’t fact check things I believe are correct or confirm all spellings. Hope you love this book even as you find my mistakes!
Pottstown, Pennsylvania, not far from Reading. A little further to Philadelphia. James McBride, one of the very best story tellers in the United States introduces us to Chona and Moshe and Nate and Addie, all residents of Chicken Hill in Pottstown. The town won’t run water up there, so folks on Chicken Hill either need to dig wills, which are running dry in the period this story covers in the mid-1920s and 1930s. (It opens in 1972, but quickly turns and stays back in time). Many of them go to the public water faucet for their needs and there are no sewers, meaning Chicken Hill is dirty and unhealthy. Because it used to be where all the Jews in Pottstown lived and it’s still where the Black population lives. By 1930, most Jews have moved downtown, though the Synagogue (Shul) is still on Chicken Hill and the problems with sufficient water have impacted the Shul, because it is needed for the Mikvah, a pool of natural water used by Jewish women (usually Orthodox) for religious ritual purposes.
So, on Chicken Hill, there are still a few Jewish businesses: a bakery, a custom shoemaker/repair place and The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. We first meet Moshe when he has not yet found a calling. He is drawn to Chona, the daughter of the store owners. She has a severe limp from a polio and she is “odd”. Because Chona wants to learn. She wants to touch the Talmud and read from it. She has guts and she writes to the newspapers complaining about the local doctor marching with the KKK in a recent parade. (She went to school with him. He too has a limp.) She writes about long standing city practices of not bringing water to Chicken Hill. She ticks off the various white, non-Jewish powerful men of the town and she does not care because she speaks truth. She is also kind, generous, lovely and beloved by not only the people she helps but by most of those powerful men. She has a way about her. Moshe falls in love with her and, for the rest of her life, he lets her be her authentic self, which is never a given and was a very unlikely scenario in this historic time. Moshe eventually buys a local theater and brings live acts to town for the Jewish community, initially finding tremendous success. His cousin Isaac in Philadelphia owns a number of successful theaters and he is Moishe’s friend and mentor. Chona runs the store, not because they need money, but because it gives her life meaning and she can help those who need help, giving marbles to the children and credit to their parents.
Chona and Addie are friends, though how close they can get is tempered. Nate, Addies husband, works for Moshe and they similarly care deeply about one another, but can only get so close. Because it is odd for white folks, even if they are a minority who experience significant antisemitism to befriend Black folks and for Black folks to risk being too trusting of white folks. Still, they have each others backs and both couples get involved with Dodo, Addie’s and Nate’s 12-13 year old nephew who needs a place to stay. He was deafened in an accident that killed his mother and he is smart and can talk some, but he cannot hear anything but noises.
McBride populates Pottstown with an array of amazing characters who we genuinely “know” and whose roles are sometimes amusing, sometimes criminal, sometimes helpful and sometimes deadly. But always, he give us their humanity. Why they are who they are and what made them better or worse people. We even get to know some of the dead, the forebears who figured ways around the water problem but now it’s not working. The ways the Black and Jewish community have always had some reasons to interact and rely on one another, even though it was always considered odd and improper by both sides. And among many of them, some practically angels and some a far way from the Deity, there is a loyalty and community that means when Dodo faces a catastrophic situation, many come together for him. McBride has a tremendous understanding of immigrant Jews and Jewish life/rituals that fully matches his portrayal of the Pottstown Black community. As a person with Jewish roots, friend to a family that has Black Pottstown roots, it was a pleasure to hear just the right voice for these communities.
McBride makes us laugh but he pulls no punches. There is tremendous warmth and love but there is tragedy, there are mess-ups, there are deaths that we kind of are okay with and those that are devastating. My favorite book so far in 2023 and, with some others I’ve read, that’s saying a lot!
Note that the Audible Book narrator, Dominic Hoffman, is an amazing performer, getting accents right and tone right and never once making me wince. (He pulled that off in another favorite McBride book, Deacon King Kong). I plan to look for him when I spend my audible credits. A+ all around!
They Called me Bookworm 