Fire
in Beulah Fire in
Beulah is a chronicle of race, greed, and moral choice in
the tense days of the Oklahoma oil rush. At its center is
the complex relationship between Althea Whiteside, an oil
wildcatter's high-strung wife who escaped from a
hardscrabble childhood, and her enigmatic black maid,
Graceful. Both are caught in the relentless currents of
family and violence. Their juxtaposing stories-and
those of others close to them-unfold against a
volatile backdrop of fear, hate, and lynchings that climax
in the Tulsa race riot of 1921, during which whites burn the
city's prosperous black section to the ground. The riot
becomes the crucible that melds and tests each of the
characters; their story is the American story of race, a
tale that declares the simple truth that we are irrevocably
tied to one another. "A haunting,
engrossing portrait of two families-one white, one
black-whose lives are woven together and then
shattered...Askew's final hundred pages are a cinematic,
apocalyptic denouement, as all the characters are swept up
in the terrible racial tidal wave." -The
Washington Post "In Rilla
Askew's tinderbox of a novel, racial distrust runs deep as
marrow in the Oklahoma of the 1920s. Black and white
Oklahomans eye one another with deeply embedded trepidation,
moving like partners in an uneasy dance where they think
they know each other too well, but don't really know each
other at all...What clearly compels Askew is that indelible
stain on our psyche, the great American dilemma of race that
vexes us still...Askew nails as well as any author in recent
memory the claustrophobia of racism, the devastation of hate
and the way it sucks all the air out of the world."
-The
Boston Globe "Superb...with
great passion and conviction, Askew has turned the story of
the riot into a work of compelling fiction that is
nevertheless true to the basic facts of an American
tragedy." -The
Baltimore Sun "Askew has
crafted a gripping drama, infusing this novel with the rich
details of human dilemmas...There are no pat machinations
here...Fire in Beulah touches on the substance of morality
and the composition of the human spirit, underscoring the
fact that our lives transcend perceived
boundaries." -Black
Issues Book Review "An
unflinching, yet redemptive story of America...Fire in
Beulah delves deeply into the troubled history of blacks and
whites in America, emerging with scenes so poignant and
painfully rendered as to inspire comparisons with the
greatest chroniclers of the race line that snakes through
our history: Ellison, Baldwin, Morrison." -The
St. Louis Riverfront Times "In an
arresting examination of race and heritage, Askew mixes
historical fact with compelling fiction...[her]
prose-rich, leisurely, graceful-engages all
the senses and encloses the reader in a bell jar of heat,
hate, and budding violence." -Publishers
Weekly "Askew is
skilled at characterization and description, and the reader
viscerally feels the anger, evil, fear, anxiety, tension,
grief and love of the characters." -Library
Journal Viking Rilla
Askew Rilla Askew
was born in southeastern Oklahoma in 1951, the descendent of
coal miners and sharecroppers, bootleggers and Baptist
deacons, coon hunters, school teachers, Choctaws and
Cherokees, one deputy county sheriff, and a long line of
pioneer women, all of whom make their way in one form or
another into her fiction. She 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.
375 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014