The Emporium of Heaven and Earth | Book Review

States in the 1930s. At Chicken Hill, a neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a vibrant community of immigrants, Black residents, and Jews lives amid joy and sorrow. At its heart are Moshe and Chona, a couple from Eastern Europe who have become everyone's anchor. One day friends knock on their door with a plea: take in and hide their nephew Dodo, left orphaned. He is twelve, deaf, and in danger—authorities are hunting him to lock him away in an institution-asylum (read: concentration camp). The plot is rich, the themes and reflections equally so, proof that a good novel can be many things at once. But the portrayal of the friendship that blooms in the asylum between Dodo and Monkey Pants (the only other child in an institution of grown men) is one of those passages in literature you cannot forget. Because it is so brilliantly full of life, light, and love—in a place where anyone else would see only limits, suffering, and horror.