The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store opens in 1972, when workers clearing a lot for a new townhouse development in Pottstown discover a skeleton at the bottom of a well, along with a mezuzah, a small case that often hangs on the doorframes of Jewish homes. The police question the one elderly Jewish man still living at the site of the old synagogue on Chicken Hill, but before the investigation intensifies, an Act of God intervenes: Hurricane Agnes hits the Northeast, washing away the crime scene.

McBride's storyline then bends backwards to 1925, when a Jewish theater manager named Moshe Ludlow and his wife, Chona, are living above the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store which she runs. Moshe's business is prospering — especially after he branches out from klezmer music and begins booking Black performers like the real-life swing drummer Chick Webb.

-NPR.org