The Pottstown Historical Society frequently receives inquiries about James McBride’s novel, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which takes place in Pottstown during the 1920s and 1930s.
McBride’s book an excellent, well-crafted, compelling read. Remember: While McBride utilizes Pottstown — and particularly the neighborhood known in the past as Chicken Hill — for the book’s back drop, his work is 100% fiction. Readers and Pottstown residents, familiar with McBride’s chosen locale, may nitpick at the geographic details and perhaps his portrayal of local flavor. However, this tact would be a mistake.
McBride’s book does not seek to achieve historical accuracy. At times, Main Street is used instead of High Street. (No Pottstownian ever refers to Pottstown’s High Street as Main Street!) Jewish readers may catch the strange and sometimes inconsistent spellings of Yiddish words and expressions. During this time period, there were well over one hundred Jewish families in Pottstown, not seventeen as in McBride’s novel. Chicken Hill is at least half a mile away from Manatawny Creek. One fact he does get right though — the date of Hurricane Agnes, June 24, 1972. Had McBride used different place names for the location of his fictional story about the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Pottstown residents would likely not be talking about it.
The Chicken Hill McBride depicts from a century ago was complicated. Prejudice was pervasive. Pottstown did witness KKK marches down High Street. Teachers and pupils in Pottstown’s school system targeted Blacks, Jews, and recent immigrants with petty nastiness. The former Pennhurst State School and Hospital, or, if going by its original name, the Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-minded and Epileptic, was a house of horrors.
Don’t look to McBride’s book as Pottstown’s history. But as a good yarn, it is pretty good historical fiction.
