“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” confirms the abiding strength of McBride’s vernacular narrative. With his eccentric, larger-than-life characters and outrageous scenes of spliced tragedy and comedy, “Dickensian” is not too grand a description for his novels, but the term is ultimately too condescending and too Anglican. The melodrama that McBride spins is wholly his own, steeped in our country’s complex racial tensions and alliances. Surely, the time is not too far distant when we’ll refer to other writers’ hypnotically entertaining stories as McBridean.
"The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store" is unflinching in its portrayal of America's treatment of Black and Jewish citizens. But it also shows how two dynamic communities band together to make their own justice, provide their own social safety net, and even furnish their own utilities by tapping into pipes when the city fails to provide running water. It is full of colorful stories of speakeasy proprietors, snooty bigwigs, hapless rabbis, stone-cold gangsters and intimidating cobblers. In the end, McBride braids all these stories together in a way that is cohesive, satisfying and hopeful.
In 1916, when W.B. Laughead, an advertising manager for Minnesota’s Red River Timber Company, published a pamphlet to promote the logging industry, a minor figure in Midwestern folklore underwent a major growth spurt, expanding dramatically in physique and reputation.
“Paul Bunyan: The Invention of an American Legend,” by the cartoonist Noah Van Sciver, puts the spotlight on Laughead, who also wrote and illustrated the pamphlet.