Fire in Beulah

Rating:
Summary: Well defined characters in a good story, good history
Review: Too little is written about the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, one of the horrendous race wars of the early 20th century. Rilla Askew uses it for the climactic scenes of "Fire in Beulah." That alone stands as a strong selling point for a novel.

"Fire in Beulah" is the study of two women,one white and one black, living with social outrages of Jim Crow. Althea and Graceful are memorable characters that could carry a book by themselves. But Askew clearly defines the supporting cast, including rich oil men, a half black-half Indian mid wife, and criminals both black and white.

Althea is the wealthy white woman and Graceful her live in maid. One tries to maintain strong family ties, the other has spent a lifetime trying to forget family.

The voices are believable, the historical backdrop well-researched and pacing (difficult in such a story) excellent.

Also, Askew manages to avoid cliches and writes a story that is always unpredicatable.

My only minor quarrel is that some elements of the story are not fully realized. Certain plot lines are never explained. Still, this did not detract from my overall enjoyment of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, Chilling Historical Fiction
Review: Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1920. Althea Whiteside Dedmeyer, the young wife of an oilman, uneasily co-exists in her household with a black servant named Graceful. Althea has a past that she has hidden from her husband Franklin and there is something about Graceful that provokes her. Then one day, a young black boy comes to the Dedmeyer house with a note addressed to Graceful Whiteside. What follows is a chilling account of racial strife and greed over oil strikes.

Althea's past is exposed by a mysterious stranger who whips up turmoil everywhere he goes, ruining Franklin's attempt to sink a new oil well, goading a white mob into lynching and worse. Rilla Askew has a marvelous literary style that brings the 1921 Tulsa race riot painfully back to life. In doing so, she holds tenaciously to the racial views of the time, which can make for uncomfortable reading today. The characters do not experience sudden epiphanies of racial tolerance; there is no feel-good ending. But at that time and place, there couldn't be, and Askew is to be commended for a wonderful merging of literary writing with history.