You Should Read THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE by Rachel Beanland

The best historical fiction focuses not on what happened but on how people felt about an event, lived through it, and carried on afterward.

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 (or her books, at least, since we’ve never actually met!).

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.

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BONUS: Sentence Study

If grammar isn’t your jam, feel free to skip this section! But if the word “syntax” makes you tingly with potential, let’s break down this excerpt from The House is on Fire.

Today I start teaching my summer concurrent enrollment class. It’s English Composition, so I’m always on the lookout for mentor texts to use. 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

• Splinter 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!) 

Look at this guy shimmy!

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? 

Find more reading and writing possibilities based on my full post.