You Should Read THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE by Rachel Beanland
“When he is as close to the chandelier as he can get, he takes a deep breath and tries to blow the candles out, but the chandelier is too far away for the flames to even flicker.”
Reading Notes
Few things beat discovering a new author you love, especially if that author has written more than one book. Such is the story of Rachel Beanland and me. I received The House is on Fire for a Christmas gift and read it in a single day, after which I made a special trip to Tattered Cover to buy her first book, Florence Adler Swims Forever. You should really read both, but let’s start with The House is on Fire.
I’m picky about my historical fiction. Sometimes authors get over-excited about their research and flatten their characters beneath dates and facts. Their protagonists become little more than paper dolls moving from one historically accurate background to the next, without being given the chance to develop into complex people. My neighborhood book club recently read a book with such lackluster characterization. Despite the immense praise heaped on the author (who I won’t name because if you can’t say something nice…), I never got past the paper-doll feeling. If you’ve ever had a similarly disappointing experience, allow me to introduce you to Rachel Beanland.
Beanland uses the 1811 Richmond Theater fire as inspiration. She spreads narration duties among four characters, all of whom, according to her author’s note, “are based on the lives of real people who were affected by the disaster.” While it’s clear Beanland conducted extensive research, the facts never seem intrusive or show-offy, in the “look how much research I did” kind of way. Instead, the characters fully inhabit their specific historical moment. Rather than using Trivial Pursuit-style tidbits to drive their actions, Beanland allows their own personal desires to motivate them. The setting, rather than being a plot device, becomes what it should be: a backdrop.
Sally Campbell is a widow visiting her brother-in-law and his family. Cecily Patterson is a slave for the Price family. Gilbert Hunt is a blacksmith working to buy his freedom. Jack Gibson is an orphan working as a stagehand for the theater company. By the time we’ve heard from each of their voices, the theater is on fire after a backstage miscommunication—with hundreds of people trapped inside. As in all disasters, some characters tap into unknown courage, while others shrink into childlike panic. Beanland deftly balances the narrative voices with short chapters, impeccable pacing, and high stakes.
The braided narrative works well because each character faces external and internal conflicts that challenge their personal moral codes. At first, characters struggle to escape (or help others escape) the blazing building, but the fire’s threat becomes figurative as well as literal when the theater director decides to deflect blame from his own shoddy oversight. He plants a rumor that angry slaves committed arson. While Gilbert works to save victims from the fire, he must also protect himself from the white patrol, which is led by his employer. At the same time, Cecily realizes that the fire may be her one chance to escape slavery. Unbeknownst to Gilbert and Cecily, Jack wrestles with telling the truth about a broken pulley on the theater chandelier, and Sally works selflessly to help as many people as possible.
The best historical fiction writers manage to take an event with a known outcome and layer suspense, surprise, and heartache on top of it. The best historical fiction focuses not on what happened but on how people felt about an event, lived through it, and carried on afterward. Beanland accomplishes this feat in The House is on Fire.
Need-to-Know
Pub Date: 2023
Length: 364 pages; audiobook runs 12.5 hours
Timeline: 3 days (December 26-29, 1811)
Narrator: braided narration with 4 characters in 3rd POV
Pairs Well With: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood; News of the World by Paulette Jiles
Book Club
The actors are some of the first to escape because they are on the ground floor. While they compare stories at a tavern nearby, the director, Placide, takes stock: “There is going to be an inquest. ….And I don’t think I need to remind you that there are few people held in lower esteem than actors. ….If we go public with this story [about the broken pulley]...I see no reason to believe we will not be immediately dispatched to the gallows” (85). He tells everyone from the theater company to keep their mouths shut about what really happened backstage. Jack, who feels overwhelming guilt, cannot agree to the lie. Placide dismisses his qualms, saying, “In our business, we call it acting.”
Placide’s lie may be the most egregious, but it’s not the only one. Consider other lies throughout the book. How do characters handle them? To what extent are these lies justified? How would you respond in each situation?
As the theater-goers realize how dire the situation is, they crowd toward the exit. The hallway becomes so crowded that “it becomes impossible for those closest to the doors to open them” (35). Up in the balcony, smoke thickens the air. A man ahead of Sally pries a board off the window and passes it to her: “Nails stick out of the board in all directions, and if she lets it clatter to the floor, one of the nails is sure to skewer a woman in the foot” (36-7). Despite the panic surrounding her, Sally possesses the wits to consider others around her. She’s also able to look past the immediate situation and follow a trail of potential causes-and-effects that may cause additional harm. Have you experienced a frightening or stressful situation where you surprised yourself with your reaction?
Close Reading
Reading this novel reminded me of The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s 1953 play about the Salem Witch Trials. As in Salem, rumors spread in Richmond. Additionally, as Miller uses the imagery of a crucible, or a vessel in which metal can be melted, to represent the toxic miasma of fear and distrust in Salem, Beanland uses the imagery of the blacksmith to represent the dangerous situation in Richmond.
When we first meet Gilbert, we learn about Good Pete, who owned both a forge and Gilbert. Beanland writes, “What Gilbert learned from Good Pete was that something magical happened at the anvil, and a blacksmith either knew what to do with it or he didn’t. A hot iron rod was nothing but raw potential—it might become a trammel to hold a pot full of food over a fire, a sickle to help a farmer with the harvest, or a tire to get a cart to market—but Gilbert never tried to force it to be something it didn’t want to be” (25). Gilbert’s willingness to work with the material instead of against it demonstrates his character: he’s strong and considerate.
Later, when members of Placide and Green’s theater company visit Cameron Kemp’s forge to plant the rumor of a slave rebellion, Gilbert pretends to work so he can eavesdrop. In this scene, Beanland uses the rod, which we already associate with Gilbert, to illustrate the slave’s predicament. The rod heats and glows during Kemp’s discussion about leading a slave patrol. Although Gilbert needs “to remove [the rod] from the coals,” he waits because once it’s removed from heat, “he’s got to go back to banging on it at the anvil, and he won’t be able to hear anything the men say” (134). Kemp’s conversation continues until “[t]he iron rod is white between Gilbert’s tongs, and he’s in danger of turning it to liquid” (135). Gilbert, like the rod, is in danger of being destroyed by Kemp’s racism, anger, and jealousy. The rod heats and changes colors as the tension between Kemp and Gilbert increases. But because Beanland has already introduced us to the iron rod as something that cannot be shaped against its will, we hope that Gilbert will be able to bend to avoid Kemp’s wrath without breaking his own spirit.
Creative Writing
As the theater burns and Cecily can’t find Maria, she tries to convince herself the young woman escaped and made it home. When Maria’s brother, Elliott, reaches the site and frantically searches for Maria, Cecily realizes Maria likely hasn’t survived. She also realizes this may be her chance to escape. If neither Maria nor Cecily return home, the Price family will assume both have perished. Beanland depicts this conflict as an if-then scenario.
At the theater: “Cecily pulls her shawl tight and stares up at the copper sky. The problem with getting an idea as big as leaving is that there is no folding it up and putting it away. If Cecily returns to the Price place now, she’ll live the rest of her days knowing she missed her one chance at a different life” (65).
Cecily to her mother: “I’m saying if everyone thinks I’m dead, I might finally be able to be free” (106).
Put your character in the middle of an impossible choice. What do they risk losing if they stay? What will they lose forever if they leave? Use this template to start your scene: If everything thinks I’m ___, I might finally be able to be ___. See where it takes your character.
Sentence Study
I pulled out these sentences to share with my students because they are great examples of sentence variety.
“Jack climbs out onto the nearest rafter, shimmying over the heads of the two carpenters. Splinters of wood slice into the meat of his hands” (33).
Each sentence is simple because it has a single subject-predicate pair:
Jack climbs
Splinters … slice
The second half of the first sentence, “shimmying over the heads of the two carpenters,” is a participial phrase that acts as an adverb to modify how Jack is climbing. It’s what is sometimes called a sentence-closer because of its placement at the end of the sentence. In addition to helping us picture Jack, the phrase also serves the musical purpose of breaking up the rhythm of the “Jack” sentence and the “Splinters” sentence. If those were side-by-side, the effect would be a bit monotonous because they are both simple sentences that start with subject-verb combinations and end with prepositional phrases.
And can we also talk about the fantastic verbs/verbals?! “Climbs” and “slice” are great action verbs, but my favorite word in this excerpt is “shimmying.” A participle is a type of verbal, which is when a verb no longer acts as a verb but as a different part of speech. Onomatopoeia is when a word sounds like what it names. To my knowledge, there is no word that describes a word that sounds like the movement it conveys, but if there is, that’s what “shimmying” is.” I can’t read or say that word without picturing some side-to-side hip action—or, honestly, those inflatable dancing things at car dealerships. (If you haven’t seen that episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia yet, you are missing out!)
Give it a try in your own writing. Scan a draft for a pair (or series) of sentences that start with subject-verb. How can you add in a sentence-closer phrase to add some description to your writing and some musicality to your language?
