The story begins in 1972 with the discovery of a skeleton at the bottom of an old well on Chicken Hill in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, then quickly shifts from that mystery to the interaction of Jewish and African-American neighbors on the hill 47 years earlier.

We haven't forgotten about the mystery. James McBride, author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, will get to that eventually.

As he's done before, McBride prefers to give his primary characters a bit of time on stage before getting into the meat of a story. Some may complain this slows the plot, but that's not the case. It's important to get to know the characters so we can understand their role in the plot. And, the introductions are never boring.

Among the first of these characters we meet are Chona Ludlow, the outspoken Jewish proprietress of the eponymous store who deals compassionately with one and all, and her husband Moshe who, encouraged by Chona, desegregates his theater so their Black neighbors can enjoy musical acts with his other customers. This unorthodox behavior doesn't sit well with the downhill community, particularly Doc Roberts, the town's leading physician and proud member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Things come to a head in the narrative when the Ludlows shelter Dodo, the orphaned nephew of Addie and Nate, their employees, who was deafened in the accidental explosion of a stove. A state plan to institutionalize the boy, abetted by Doc Roberts, sets the train in motion for a rescue plan in the hill community.

Though the characters are eventually united in purpose, people are separated by their personal prejudices. If a husband and wife or brother and sister can't fully understand the motivations of one another, how can we expect it of people of differing ethnic and racial groups? Yet, those divisions become less important when they are united in a joint cause. It is Dodo's plight that unites them.

This wonderful story is a modern version of Dante's Divine Comedy. McBride's other life as a musician may have a part in him giving us the blues in prose, a merging of tragedy and humor you'll seldom find in a novel, that will have you humming its refrain for days after reading the novel.