Fire in Beulah

the long version

"At the center of this work is the complex relationship between Althea Whiteside, an oil wildcatter's high-strung wife, and her enigmatic black maid, Graceful. Both are caught in the relentless currents of family and violence. Their contrapuntal stories - and those of others close to then - unfold against a volatile backdrop of oil-boom opulence, fear, hate, and lynchings that climax in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, during which whites burned the city's prosperous black section to the ground.". "The conflagration of the riot becomes the crucible that melds and tests each of the characters in Fire in Beulah; their story is the American race story, a tale that affirms the essential truth that we are irrevocably tied to one another."--BOOK JACKET.