1-27-2026 4:25am

Local Landscape Fuels Writers' Imaginations

Lesley Misko Editor

by Expression Staff

Recently, we published two articles about the most popular books of 2025 nationally and locally. Today wraps up that series by highlighting three books with local ties for our readers.

Our southeastern Pennsylvania towns and valleys, churches and back streets hold stories of human experience and local history. For three diverse writers connected to the region—Joseph J. Swope of the Reading area, Boyertown area poet Phil Repko, and novelist James McBride— location is an active force shaping stories and emotions. Though they work in different genres, these writers share a commitment to honoring the experiences of people rooted in the towns and neighborhoods of Berks and Montgomery counties.

Joseph J. Swope: Fiction from the Reading Area

Joseph J. Swope, a writer from the Reading, Pennsylvania area, writes fiction that reflects the complexities of everyday life. His work reflects awareness of communities, family dynamics, and the challenges that define small-city existence.

Swope’s stories focus on characters coping with uncertainty, personal history, and the weight of choices made or avoided. He approaches his subjects with restraint and empathy, allowing emotional complexity to emerge through detail and dialogue. His connection to the region lends authenticity to his storytelling; the environments feel inhabited rather than described.

[More about the book and author here.]

Phil Repko: Poetry from Boyertown

Poet Phil Repko, raised in the Boyertown area, brings a poetic sensibility to the same region. His poetry often draws from personal memory, Catholic imagery, family life, and the natural and built environments of rural and small-town Pennsylvania. Where Swope’s fiction explores narrative momentum, Repko’s poems linger—on moments, objects, and emotions that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

Repko has a gift for compressing complex feeling into precise language, using place as a motivation for reflection. Fields, neighborhoods, churches, and domestic spaces become sites of contemplation, where past and present blur. His poems often carry a quiet spiritual undercurrent, rooted in ritual, loss, and the search for meaning.

Boyertown and its surrounding landscape function not merely as settings, but as emotional touchstones. Repko’s poetry suggests that to understand oneself fully, one must also reckon with where one comes from.

[More about the book and author here.]

James McBride and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

While Joseph J. Swope and Phil Repko have personal ties to the region, James McBride approaches southeastern Pennsylvania from a historical perspective. His novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is set in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and draws inspiration from the real-life, interracial community that existed there in the early twentieth century.

McBride uses Pottstown as a stage for exploring themes of race, community, justice, and morality. The novel centers on a Jewish-owned grocery store that becomes a hub for Black and Jewish residents alike—an imagined space rooted in historical truth.

The town’s geography, divisions, and bonds are integral to the novel’s power, reinforcing the idea that small towns can hold stories of national significance.

[More about the book and author here.]

A Shared Landscape, Many Voices

What unites Joseph J. Swope, Phil Repko, and James McBride is not just geography, but a shared belief that place matters. Reading, Boyertown, and Pottstown are not interchangeable settings; they are specific, lived-in worlds that shape character and narrative. Their writing invites readers to contemplate the towns they pass through—or call home—and to recognize the depth, struggle, and beauty embedded there.

Their Books: (all available from Amazon.com)

Sharpened Blade: The Story of Dinah Clark by Joseph J. Swope

Pieces of April by Phil Repko

Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride