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A Fever in the Heartland - Timothy Egan - 2023
The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
By: Timothy Egan
Narrated by: Timothy Egan
Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 04-04-23
Categories: History, United States
Language: English
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Format: mp3 64/48 stereo
"With meticulous detective work, Timothy Egan shines a light on one of the most sinister chapters in American history—how a viciously racist movement, led by a murderous conman, rose to power in the early twentieth century. A Fever in the Heartland is compelling, powerful, and profoundly resonant today."—David Grann, author of THE WAGER and KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them.
The Roaring Twenties—the Jazz Age—has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.
Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows–their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman–Madge Oberholtzer–who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.
A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.
Photo courtesy of The Indiana Album: Evan Finch Collection.
©2023 Timothy Egan (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Editorial Review
A dark history brought to light
Having loved Timothy Egan’s Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, I was excited to see this new release from him, which he narrates himself. I am endlessly fascinated by the turbulence of 1920s and ‘30s America. While I knew the KKK operated with extraordinary impunity in the ’20s, I didn’t realize just how much power they wielded, especially in Indiana. Apparently the "Grand Dragon," D.C. Stephenson, had a private police force of 30,000 men, the governor in his pocket, and the enthusiastic support of much of the citizenry. It is an eye-opening, chilling, and thorough account from Egan, a National Book Award winner, who expertly paces this dark narrative of how one woman used her pain and sacrifice to bring Stephenson down and halt the hatred threatening to swallow America whole. —Phoebe N., Audible Editor
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