In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, we’re digging the foundations for a new housing development. The last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African-Americans lived side-by-side, sharing ambitions and sorrows. As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America, and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community - heaven and earth - that ultimately sustain us.