How long does it take to read The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store?
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride takes about 10 hours 17 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 10 hours 17 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2023. 561 pages, about 154,275 words.
21 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 17 hours 9 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 17 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 26 minutes |
The page count is the median across 10 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
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 neighbourhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins 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.
Subjects: Historical Fiction, General Fiction, Fiction, Historical, African American
