A Fever in the Heartland

Author: Timothy Egan
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 432
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: 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 no 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 into 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.

Review: Despite the amount of time since I posted a book, this was only a two day read. I basically took two weeks off from reading because my kids were on spring break one week, and my husband the following. I also had a couple books I started, but set aside for the time being because I couldn't get into them.

I love Timothy Egan's writing so I was thrilled to see he had a new book published. A Fever in the Heartland shed light on so many of the issues we deal with today. Egan writes in a storytelling, readable style and I learned so much. 

The Klan is certainly not what I think of when I think about the 1920s, but for people living during that time, they would have been a common sight and a big part of their lives, whether they realized it or not. As a descendant of Polish Catholic immigrants who were relatively new to the Pittsburgh area in the 1920s, I am proud to say that when the Klan tried to make in-roads here, mobs beat them back.