Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: James McBride

James McBride never forgets the “story” in his books.

A lot of novels center on character development or action or suspense or social concerns but often lack an actual “story.”

McBride never shorts readers of any of those other elements. He always introduces plenty of memorable characters, places them in situations where they must act, has readers turning pages to find out what happens next while learning something along the way.

But James McBride always frames these things in a well-crafted story, from his past novels such as “The Good Lord Bird” and “Deacon King Kong” to his recently released novel, “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.”

The new book opens with a mystery – workers discovering a skeleton and a piece of jewelry while digging the foundation for a housing development in a predominantly Black neighborhood in 1972.

As cops ask questions about the human bones, the story pushes back nearly 50 years to when the neighborhood was known as Chicken Hill still partly Jewish and becoming more of an African-American community.

Moshe and Chona Ludlow run the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store in Chicken Hill. Moshe, a European immigrant who also operates an integrated dance hall, wants to move away with the other Jews leaving the neighborhood but Chona loves the neighborhood and the grocery store she runs. She grew up in this neighborhood and she loves the people of her integrated community.

When the state wants to institutionalize a Chicken Hill boy because he is orphaned and deaf, Chona takes the boy in and works with neighbors, such as Nate Timblin and his family, to protect him.

There is much to protect him from.

The boy and all of the Chicken Hill residents are at the mercy of the white Christian townspeople. Chicken Hill lies on the proverbial outskirts of the town’s majority faction and Chicken Hill residents regularly face “bigotry, hypocrisy and deceit.”

And they regularly rely on one another to work, to play, to grieve and to survive, whether it’s against the city slowly diverting the community’s water, or dealing with a prominent but malicious physician, or overcoming the lies that harm them.

“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” is not as strong or as well composed as McBride books like “Deacon King Kong” which effortlessly fuses characters, place and story, or “The Good Lord Bird” where legendary abolitionist John Brown is joined on his anti-slavery crusade by a young boy whom Brown mistakenly thinks is a girl.

But same as his past books, McBride never forgets the story in “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” and he remembers the humanity that sustains not only his characters but his readers’ souls.

Kitchen Confidential: Anthony Bourdain

Reading Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” now, more than five years after his death, is coming at his famous life completely backward.

“Parts Unknown,” his CNN series of world travels, cultures and, of course, food, was my introduction to Bourdain about a decade ago. and even that was a somewhat backward intro, given he had already hosted “A Cook’s Tour” on the Food Network and “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel.

Then came his unexpected, self-inflicted death in 2018. Since, I have watched the posthumous episodes of “Parts Unknown,” picked up a graphic novel featuring him as a writer, read a couple of biographies and watched the biographical documentary “Roadrunner.”

It’s all rather sad, especially given how his shows celebrated life in an often acerbic way, though with a style, looking back, that underscored the darkness, the sadness, the tragedy always lurking just beneath the skin.

And it was a crushing blow, too, to realize such despair in a life that many people envied, at least the life seen on television: travel, food, seeing new things, meeting new people, presenting it all in a smart and creative way that celebrated style but accentuated substance.

A life many people wanted but one that led him to brutally end it.

So coming back to “Kitchen Confidential,” the book cover recently jumped from atop a stack of biographies at the local book store. A much-younger Bourdain, hair dark not yet gray and silver, still wearing his chef whites. The book that set him on the path from being a middling New York City chef in the late 1990s named Tony Bourdain to becoming the Anthony Bourdain we all came to know.

“Kitchen Confidential” is what thrust the middle-aged Bourdain into the national then international spotlight. The book was a bestseller as Bourdain shared secrets from New York City restaurants with stories and knowledge that apply to kitchen workers anywhere and people who eat in restaurants everywhere.

His insights are still relevant nearly 25 years later: reasons for not ordering seafood on Mondays, kitchen knives, etc.

His style was already a quasi-mix of irreverence and reverence. He tells stories about cooks, kitchen workers and restaurant owners like a pirate sharing tales about life on a ship but he writes about food and the art of its creation with the same respect that a pirate has for the sea.

“Kitchen Confidential” remains a classic and relevant book. Enough time has passed where it’s a pleasure, rather than a sadness, “hearing” Bourdain’s voice again. We should still pay heed to the lessons of his life but his experiences and adventures should be celebrated.