Fire in Beulah

Description: During the tense days of the Oklahoma oil rush of the 1920s, Althea Whiteside and her enigmatic black maid, Graceful, are caught in the relentless currents of family and violence. Their stories unfold against a backdrop of fear, hate, and lynchings that climax in the Tulsa race riot of 1921, during which the city's prosperous black section is burned to the ground.

Review Quotes: 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