Fire in Beulah - Softcover

Askew, Rilla

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142000248 ISBN 13: 9780142000243

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2001

Synopsis

Set during the tense days of the Oklahoma oil rush, Rilla Askew's Fire in Beulah is a mesmerizing story that centers on the complex relationship between Althea Whiteside, an oil wildcatter's high-strung wife, and Graceful, her enigmatic black maid. Their juxtaposing stories—and those of others close to them—unfold against a volatile backdrop of oil-boom opulence, fear, hatred, lynchings that climax in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, when whites burned the city's properous black community. Askew's award-winning first novel, The Mercy Seat, was praised for its astute diepiction of family bonds and the beauty of American landscape. Now she explores the American race story with the same perception.

About this title

About the Author:

Rilla Askew is the author of Strange Business, a collection of stories, and of the novel The Mercy Seat, nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Award and winner of the Western Heritage Award and the Oklahoma Book Award. She divides her time between the San Bois Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma and upstate New York.

From Publishers Weekly:

In an arresting examination of race and heritage, Askew (The Mercy Seat) mixes historical fact with compelling fiction. From the ominous opening scene to the race-segregated society of 1920s Tulsa, Okla., the reader is carried along on a journey of fragmented memories and introduced to characters with shadowy motives and even darker secrets. Althea Whiteside is 13 when her mother, kicked by a calf during pregnancy, gives birth to Japheth, the only boy in a family of seven girls. His portentous entrance into the world is just the beginning of his influence on Althea's life and the destruction he will leave in his wake. Years later, Althea has left her impoverished family and married dashing oil baron Franklin Dedmeyer. She's content to be his pampered, social wife, taken care of by servantsDincluding Graceful Whiteside, a black woman whom Althea views with alternate fascination and repulsion, as she slowly realizes that the two share more than a surname. A mysterious letter, a double lynching and Japheth's sudden intrusion into Althea's life set in motion events that draw these characters closer to one another and to the great fire and race riot of Tulsa in 1921, a murderous rampage that ran most of the blacks out of town and left hundreds dead. Written from multiple perspectives the narrative is at times difficult to follow, but Askew's bold and disturbing chronicle of greed, racial hatred and intrigue rewards patient attention. Her proseDrich, leisurely, gracefulDengages all the senses and encloses the reader in a bell jar of heat, hate and budding violence. By the novel's end, all the voices coalesce into a vivid account of the riot, during which the various characters' hubris and heroism are exposed. Agent, Jane Gelfman. Author tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0142000248
• ISBN 13: 9780142000243
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376