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 to institutionalize a deaf boy, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshes theater who worked together to keep the boy safe.As these characters stories overlap and deepen, demonstrated is how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they need to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the towns white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and communityheaven and earththat sustain us.