THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE

Beanland imagines how the devastating Richmond Theater fire, which killed 72 people on December 26, 1811, impacted several survivors, some more fictionalized than others.

The novel, which faithfully follows the recorded facts, begins backstage at the theater, where a teenage stagehand raises a chandelier lit with candles that sets the scenery on fire. Soon theatergoers are rushing to escape. Patrick Henry’s daughter Sally Henry Campbell, at the time a 31-year-old widow, selflessly saves those around her before jumping from a window. While nursing wounded survivors over the next few days, she learns that men she knew deliberately trampled over women to get to the stairs, and she concludes that White men of her privileged class are morally bankrupt in their behavior toward both White women and enslaved Black people. While Sally is trapped inside the theater, Gilbert Hunt, an enslaved blacksmith who has secretly learned to read and write, stands outside catching women who jump. While Gilbert is touted as a hero and one of the women he saved raises money to pay for his manumission, the theater company, afraid to take the blame itself, spreads rumors pinning responsibility for the fire on a “slave rebellion.” (The actual Gilbert, though also lauded, actually purchased his freedom years later.) Soon the slave patrol, headed by Gilbert’s owner, is rounding up Black people. Meanwhile, Gilbert’s niece Cecily Patterson decides that the fire, specifically all the bodies burned beyond recognition, might spell freedom if her owners believe she died. Beanland adeptly jumps among the characters’ stories and delights in conveying details of everyday life in 1811 Virginia. But she's heavy-handed in using the story to emphasize the evils of slavery, racism, and sexism. Locked within the author’s political message, characters like the progressive Sally, saintly Gilbert, and a variety of evil White men lack dimension. Only the young stagehand Jack Gibson is allowed to express the human complexity of moral decision-making as his sense of right conflicts with loyalty to his theatrical family.

An overly schematic approach to what could have been a fascinating retelling of history.