Join the VILA Book Club
Please join us for the next meeting of the VILA Book Club sponsored by iBUG Today.
WHEN: Thursday, June 12, 2025, 6:30 to 8:00 PM Central Time
We will be discussing the following book.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, DB115655
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 for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America 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. 12 hours, 25 minutes
Facilitator: Sarah Potok
Future book readings for the next couple of months are as follows. Note: all books are available on NLS BARD.
July 10
No Hiding in Boise by Kim Hooper, DB118022 (LeDon Becker)
Angie is awakened by a midnight call from an officer with the Boise Police Department and thinks there must be a misunderstanding. The officer tells her that her husband was involved in a shooting at a local bar, but how can that be when her husband is sleeping right next to her? But when she turns to wake him, he isn't there. Tessa is the twenty-three-year-old bartender who escapes to a backroom storage closet during the shooting. When it comes to light that five people were killed, she is burdened with the question of why she survived. Joyce wakes up to a knock at her front door, a knock she assumes is her wayward son, Jed, who must have lost his keys. It's not Jed though. Two police officers tell her that Jed is dead, shot at a bar. Then they deliver even worse news: "We have reason to believe your son was the shooter." So begins the story of three women tied together by tragic fate--a wife trying to understand why her now-comatose husband was frequenting a bar in the middle of the night, the young woman whom her husband was apparently pursuing, and a mother who is forced to confront the reality of who her son was and who she is.” 9 hours, 41 minutes
August 14
The Women by Kristin Hannah, DB118896 (Gail Greenberg)
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets and becomes one of the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam. 15 hours, 0 minutes
Looking forward to seeing you at the book club.