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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Fire in Beulah
Reader Score
81%
81% of readers
recommend this book
Oil-boom opulence, fear, hate, and lynchings are the backdrop for this riveting novel about one of the worst incidents of violence in American history. Althea Whiteside, an oil-wildcatter's high-strung white wife, and her enigmatic Black maid, Graceful, share a complex connection during the tense days of the Oklahoma oil rush. Their juxtaposing stories - and those of others close to them - unfold as tensions mount to a violent climax in the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, during which whites burned the city's prosperous Black neighborhood to the ground. The massacre becomes the crucible that melds and tests each of the character in this masterful exploration of the American race story and the ties that bind us irrevocably to one another.
Book Details
- Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
- Publish Date: Dec 31st, 2001
- Pages: 384
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.44in - 5.54in - 0.85in - 0.77lb
- EAN: 9780142000243
- Recommended age: 18-UP
- Categories: • Historical - General• Literary• African American & Black - Historical
About the Author
More books by Rilla Askew
What people are saying
Novelist, essayist, guest editor @BestSmFictions, words @AGNImagazine @NimrodJournal @WorldLitToday, author #FireinBeulah. #PrizefortheFire
21 years after publication, Fire in Beulah is on Oklahoma’s Best Seller list this week. Not for the first time, but what I’m thinking about is endurance, how that was always part of the hope. #WritingCommunity #writers #Oklahoma #novel #writerslift https://t.co/rxg2a0MJ0N
The Black Reparations Project 2023. From Here to Equality, 2nd edition (2022)
@mattcone2 @DashkaSlater @jeremynsmith @RogerThurow @KatzOnEarth @bryan_caplan @michelawrong @ninamunk @RD_Economist Hope we can chat soon. A couple of works of fiction that might work well in a social studies classroom are Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country and Rilla Askew’s Fire in Beulah.
Praise for this book
Praise for Fire in Beulah:
"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
"Askew's tinderbox of a novel is suffused with an almost unbearable tension . . . a moving, troubling story . . . 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
Compelling, intense and frightening . . . recalls and recreates a devastating if largely forgotten historical event in order to explore the awful consequences of human failure."
--Chicago Tribune
"A devastating story of greed, violence, and destruction . . . Askew's novel is riveting and remarkably relevant."
--The Portland Oregonian
What people are saying
Novelist, essayist, guest editor @BestSmFictions, words @AGNImagazine @NimrodJournal @WorldLitToday, author #FireinBeulah. #PrizefortheFire
21 years after publication, Fire in Beulah is on Oklahoma’s Best Seller list this week. Not for the first time, but what I’m thinking about is endurance, how that was always part of the hope. #WritingCommunity #writers #Oklahoma #novel #writerslift https://t.co/rxg2a0MJ0N
The Black Reparations Project 2023. From Here to Equality, 2nd edition (2022)
@mattcone2 @DashkaSlater @jeremynsmith @RogerThurow @KatzOnEarth @bryan_caplan @michelawrong @ninamunk @RD_Economist Hope we can chat soon. A couple of works of fiction that might work well in a social studies classroom are Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country and Rilla Askew’s Fire in Beulah.