Publisher Description
By the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever, a riveting reimagining of one of early America’s deadliest tragedies, the Richmond Theater Fire of 1811, told from the perspectives of four characters whose lives are irrevocably altered in the aftermath of the inferno.
Richmond, Virginia 1811.
It’s the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman plantation owners, 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 at the front of a church.
On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers. Among them, in the third-floor boxes, is Sally Henry Campbell, who is still reeling after the death of her husband. For Cecily Patterson, in the colored gallery, the play is nothing but a four-hour reprieve from a life of enslavement 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 being able to bring his wife to the theater one day, but he’ll have to buy her freedom first.
When the theater suddenly 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 countless others. In the days following the fire, the lives of these four people will intertwine in ways that could never be expected as the news of the fire begins to spread across the United States.
Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House Is on Fire offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption.
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“This is a propulsive, pulse-pounding read—one that grabbed hold of me and didn’t let me go until the very last page.”
—
Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author
About Rachel Beanland
Rachel Beanland’s essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction and Broad Street, among other publications. She is a fiction student in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University and holds bachelor’s degrees in art history and journalism from the University of South Carolina.
About the Narrators
Andi Arndt is a professional voice actor, the winner of a 2017 Audie Award for Best Romance, and winner of two Earphones Awards.
Michael Crouch is an actor based in New York City. His audiobook narration has won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, and Best of the Year accolades from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. He can also be heard on national commercials, cartoons, video games, and the animé series Pokémon XY and Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V.
Joniece Abbott-Pratt has narrated many audiobooks for children, young adults, and adults. She has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards and in 2021 was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for Best Fantasy Narration. She earned an MFA degree in acting from the University of Iowa and has performed on regional theater stages across the country, including the Public Theater in New York City. She has also appeared on television shows, including The Good Fight, Law and Order: SVU, Luke Cage, and Orange Is the New Black, and has voiced commercials and projects for US Bank, Johnson & Johnson, and others.
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.