Baltimore Sun
...superb...with great passion and conviction, Askew has turned the story of the riot into a work of compelling fiction...
Black Issues Book Review
Askew's characters are complex, fraught with those concerns, tendencies and motivations that make us the best and worst of who we are. —March-April 2001
Boston Globe
...a moving, troubling story passionately told...[Askew] deftly blends historical fact with fiction.
Chicago Tribune
...[an] intense and frightening novel...compelling...
Dallas Morning News
Ms. Askew's vivid account of the harrowing times makes her most recent novel hard to put down.
Omaha World-Herald
...this novel is suffused with an almost unbearable tension - anything can happen at any time.
San Jose Mercury News
...a moving, troubling story passionately told by Askew...one that deftly blends historical fact with fiction.
Publishers Weekly
- Publisher's Weekly
In an arresting examination of race and heritage, Askew (The Mercy Seat) mixes historical fact with compelling fiction. From the ominous opening scene to the race-segregated society of 1920s Tulsa, Okla., the reader is carried along on a journey of fragmented memories and introduced to characters with shadowy motives and even darker secrets. Althea Whiteside is 13 when her mother, kicked by a calf during pregnancy, gives birth to Japheth, the only boy in a family of seven girls. His portentous entrance into the world is just the beginning of his influence on Althea's life and the destruction he will leave in his wake. Years later, Althea has left her impoverished family and married dashing oil baron Franklin Dedmeyer. She's content to be his pampered, social wife, taken care of by servants--including Graceful Whiteside, a black woman whom Althea views with alternate fascination and repulsion, as she slowly realizes that the two share more than a surname. A mysterious letter, a double lynching and Japheth's sudden intrusion into Althea's life set in motion events that draw these characters closer to one another and to the great fire and race riot of Tulsa in 1921, a murderous rampage that ran most of the blacks out of town and left hundreds dead. Written from multiple perspectives the narrative is at times difficult to follow, but Askew's bold and disturbing chronicle of greed, racial hatred and intrigue rewards patient attention. Her prose--rich, leisurely, graceful--engages all the senses and encloses the reader in a bell jar of heat, hate and budding violence. By the novel's end, all the voices coalesce into a vivid account of the riot, during which the various characters' hubris and heroism are exposed. Agent, Jane Gelfman. Author tour. (Jan. 15) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Beginning with a horrifying birth scene of fictional 13-year-old Althea Whiteside's brother and ending with the aftermath of the explosive, factual 1920 Tulsa, OK, race riots, Askew (Mercy Seat) has crafted an emotional portrait of the frailties of family and racial relationships. Althea flees her bleak family background to Tulsa as the wife of would-be oil baron Franklin Dedmeyer. Yet she cannot escape the secrets that she carries. Althea's relationship with her African American maid, Graceful, will unravel her carefully crafted existence, as well as awaken her to a bond she and Graceful share that will terrify yet ultimately save her. Askew is skilled at characterization and description, and the reader viscerally feels the anger, evil, fear, anxiety, tension, grief, and love of the characters. The description of the Oklahoma landscape and Tulsa homes of both black and whites is as clear as a photograph. The overall tone of this novel is ominous; there is simply no doubt that the repressed emotions of the characters will ultimately gush forth just as violently as oil from an Oklahoma well. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/00.]--Barbara L. Roberts, Maricopa Cty. Lib. Dist., Pheonix Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
From the talented and ambitious Askew (The Mercy Seat, 1997), a second novel set in her native state of Oklahoma, this time a tale of primal guilt and racial intolerance during the oil boom. In 1920 Tulsa, Althea Dedham is known as the spoiled wife of Franklin, an oil speculator who may finally have found his big strike down by the Deep Fork River. This is also the site of Althea's impoverished childhood and of the ghastly birth, in 1900, of her brother Japheth, whose unwelcome arrival at the Dedham home sets in motion a chain of events that will reach apocalyptic fruition in the Tulsa race riot of 1921. Japheth, we quickly learn, is Trouble: he rapes Althea's black maid, Graceful; he incites Franklin and partner Jim Dee Logan against each other; and he lies in wait for the part—Native American, part-black woman who actually owns the land Delo Petroleum is drilling so he can force her to sign her rights over to him. Iola Tiger also happens to be the midwife who saved newborn Japheth from death at the hands of his sister Althea. That's a lot of coincidence for one novel to bear, but Askew isn't interested in plausibility; our responsibility to and for other human beings is her principal theme here. She's brave enough to make her protagonist initially unlikable: Althea bullies Graceful to assuage her own sense of worthlessness and heedlessly wanders into Tulsa's black district, too immersed in her personal wretchedness and blinkered in her privileges to understand why three African-American men are terrified to have a weeping white woman in their offices. Althea's moral growth into Graceful's ally is intellectually satisfying, if not particularly moving; in general,thecharacters are strongly observed and truthfully drawn, but viewed from a distance. The mythic elements, like Iola's first-person narrative and Japheth's transformation from Bad News into Evil Incarnate, are also rendered somewhat unconvincing by this lack of emotional connection. Still, the gruesome finale makes a blistering indictment of white racism without ever uttering a didactic word, and there are haunting images throughout. Imperfect, then, but powerful and thoughtful. Author tour
