The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses depictions of racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, ableism, involuntary institutionalization, sexual assault, and child sexual abuse.

The loving, generous, and outspoken Chona Ludlow is one of the novel’s main characters. She is 17 when she meets her future husband, Moshe, who describes her as follows: “Despite her foot and limp, she was a quiet beauty, with a gorgeous nose and sweet lips [...] and eyes that shone with gaiety and mirth” (14). This description shows Moshe’s ableism as well as his admiration.

Chona overflows with love for the people around her, especially her husband and Dodo. After the boy comes to live with her, she cherishes him as her own child, “[s]omething she’d wanted and prayed for ever since she was a girl” (109). Another of Chona’s key traits is her generosity. She routinely gives food away to those in need to the point that Moshe notes that the titular grocery store “lost money every year thanks to his American-born Jewish wife” (63).

While Chona is a model of kindness, she doesn’t hold back from denouncing the problems she sees in her town and nation. She is boldly outspoken about her ideals, as her many letters to Pottstown’s newspapers attest.