The House is on Fire

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Beanland, Rachel	4-week checkout	Due 04-10-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Beanland, Rachel	4-week checkout	Due 05-22-2024

Told from the perspectives of four people whose actions changed the course of history, this masterful work of historical fiction takes readers back to 1811 Richmond, Virginia, where, on the night after Christmas, the city's only theater burned to the ground, tearing apart a community.
Richmond, Virginia 1811. It's the height of the winter social season. The General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia's gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the long and arduous journey to the capital in hopes of whiling away the darkest days of the year. At the city's only theater, the Charleston-based Placide & Green Company puts on two plays a night to meet the demand of a populace that's done looking for enlightenment in a church. On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers. In the third-floor boxes, sits newly widowed Sally Henry Campbell, who is glad for any opportunity to relive the happy times she shared with her husband. One floor away, in the colored gallery, Cecily Patterson doesn't give a whit about the play but is grateful for a four-hour reprieve from a life that has recently gone from bad to worse. Backstage, young stagehand Jack Gibson hopes that, if he can impress the theater's managers, he'll be offered a permanent job with the company. And on the other side of town, blacksmith Gilbert Hunt dreams of one day being able to bring his wife to the theater, but he'll have to buy her freedom first. When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions that will not only affect their own lives but those of countless others. And in the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined.

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Historical Fiction Lover submitted by cdeucher on June 11, 2023, 7:27am I read Florence Adler Swims Forever and loved it so I couldn't wait for her new book. If you love historical fiction and you love books told from multiple points of view, this is definitely the book for you. Set right after Christmas in Richmond, VA, this is the story of one fateful night and the lives it changed forever. Just like Florence Adler, you come to deeply care about these characters and this little known moment in history.