Join us at the Alachua Branch for a fun monthly book discussion. Each month we will select one Adult Fiction or Nonfiction title to read and discuss it as a group. Meetings will be held on the third Tuesday of each month at 2 p.m. in the Meeting Room. Copies of the current book will be available upon request at the Circulation Desk. To confirm availability, please call 386-462-2592
Currently Reading:
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
Tuesday, September 16, 2:00 p.m., Alachua Branch Meeting Room
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. (Publisher’s description)
Upcoming Meetings:
October 21 - Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
November 18 – Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
Previously Read:
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
The Wager: a Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann
The Water Dancer by Ta-Hahisi Coates
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
Hello Stranger by Katherine Center
The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
Good Company by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Maid by Nita Prose
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict
Interested in other book clubs? Learn about all our groups on our Book Clubs page.