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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. This introduction to the Chicken Hill area of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, sets up a sense of mystery as the narrative jumps back nearly 50 years to explore the town, its secrets, and its people.

Who the skeleton belonged to and how it got there are the vehicles that move this story forward. We will learn about the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated yet vibrant neighborhood community where immigrant Jews and African Americans live side by side and share ambitions and sorrows. As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much these people who lived on the margins of white Christian society struggled, and what they did to survive. When the truth is finally revealed to us, the readers, about what happened on Chicken Hill, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community - heaven and earth - that will sustain us.

In this compassionate, life-affirming, heartbreaking, and sometimes funny novel, McBride explores what it means to be part of a community and to live in the margins of a larger, more powerful, and not necessarily friendly society.