A “wildly entertaining” (NPR), “gripping” ( The Washington Post ) work of historical fiction about an incendiary tragedy that shocked a young nation and tore apart a community in a single night, from the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever . 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 at the front of 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. Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House Is on Fire is a “stunning” (Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle ), “all-consuming exploration” ( E! News ) that offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption. A Good Morning America Buzz Pick – An NPR Best Book of 2023 – A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 “The Richmond Theatre fire of 1811 was, at the time, the deadliest disaster in U.S. history, killing seventy-two. This historical novel examines the event and its aftermath through four figures: the stagehand who accidentally starts the fire; a well-to-do widow in a box seat; an enslaved young woman, attending with her mistress but confined to the colored gallery; and a blacksmith, also enslaved, who rushes to the scene and rescues patrons jumping from windows. The bad behavior of the powerful becomes a theme: the theatre company attempts to pin blame on a fabricated slave revolt, and men in the audience trample their wives in making their escape.” —The New Yorker “Beanland's gripping fictional account delves into this tragedy [the Richmond Theater Fire], examining the aftermath, the stories that were told and the blame that was unfairly laid on people without the means to defend themselves.” —Washington Post “The House Is on Fire is wildly entertaining and it deals with touchy subjects very well. [The characters] all have unique voices and their stories are treated with equal care and attention, which speaks volumes not only about Beanland’s research skills but also the empathy she has for the people she writes about. This novel is a fictionalized slice of history, but in a time when so many treat teaching history as a taboo, it is also a stark reminder of how privilege, sexism, and racism have been in this country's DNA since its inception, and that makes it necessary reading.” —NPR “Beanland has created characters so vivid they leap off the page…. A great, gripping read… Using tight, visceral prose and compact scenes covering a few minutes' worth of action at a time, Beanland creates a breathless, suspenseful pace. She follows up the story with a substantial author's note to clarify which characters and elements of the book are historical and which imagined. This is a page-turner that will leave the reader fired up and, hopefully, reflecting on whether the questions of injustice within have relevant parallels today.” —BookBrowse "THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE is the very best that historical fiction has to offer: a riveting investigation of a dark periodi n our nation's history and a championo f the voices most often silenced. Beanland has done great justice not only to the history of the Richmond Theater Fire, but to the real people who witnessed it, survived it and saved others from it. Tautly written and sensitively told, this is a masterwork from an author as compassionate as she is thorough." —Bookreporter “A narrative brimming with immediacy and authenticity…. Beanland’s principled approach to history, her fine-tuned prose, her pro