Raising Holy Hell: A Novel, by Bruce Olds
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Raising Holy Hell: A Novel, by Bruce Olds
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On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, leaving fifteen people dead. Viewed in the North as a saint of freedom and in the South as the devil incarnate, Brown was a visionary who not only foretold but made inevitable the bloody apocalypse of the Civil War. An intricate mosaic of alternating narrative voices, Raising Holy Hell is an explosive, multitextured evocation of the prophetic madness of the man who saw an America damned by the sin of slavery.
Raising Holy Hell: A Novel, by Bruce Olds- Amazon Sales Rank: #400160 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-06-09
- Released on: 2015-06-09
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly PW called this historical novel based on the life of John Brown "a remarkably complex portrait." Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal YA?Hearing the words Harper's Ferry and abolition turns one's thoughts to John Brown, the man best known for his failed attempt to raid the armory at Harper's Ferry. But the less well known side of his life is a more fascinating tale and reading it in a fictional format is perhaps the only way one can bear its unrelenting grimness. Brown was a religious fanatic, a self-flagellator, an inept businessman who kept his family impoverished and cared only about removing the scourge of slavery from America. The story is told through a series of interviews, documents, journal articles, and quotations, similar to Avi's Nothing But the Truth (Orchard, 1991), which softens Brown's rigidity and tempers the horror of his life. In setting historical background, one particularly poignant section describes the terror Africans must have felt when they were first captured, followed by the horrendous conditions they endured on their overseas voyage. A powerful, thought-provoking work.?Pam Spencer, Fairfax County Public Schools, VACopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist Early in the lives of many American children, the ballad of John Brown, the one about his body lying "a-smoldering in the grave," is introduced, and morbid curiosity begins. Why is the body smoldering? we wondered. Olds may have wondered that, too. Something compelling surely drove him to seek out this archetypal, mad character and produce a revealing novel that satisfies our childhood curiousity. But this is no child's book. Olds' quest for John Brown, slavery-hating icon, arguably the spark that set off the Civil War, led him down a treacherous path before yielding a devastating vision of an uncommon man. Readers witness the danger of that journey, for it sprawls before them in the private correspondence, diary and journal excerpts, newspaper articles, songs, poems, interviews, speeches, scriptural citations, interior monologues (of such historic figures as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Lincoln, Robert E. Lee), and eyewitness recollections that all come together so powerfully to form the novel. All this diversity is untamed by a formal chapter structure or a single point of view. Yet the reader, neither bothered nor distracted, is driven from page to page, thirsting after the next revelation, the deeper understanding of American slavery, the true purpose behind John Brown's attack on the armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, the death by hanging on December 2, 1859, and, finally, the smoldering body. Was this flagellant simply mad? The way Olds juxtaposes Brown's acts to the reign of terror that was slavery practically dismisses the question. A hauntingly excellent and singular first novel. Bonnie Smothers
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Most helpful customer reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Original Treatment of a Familiar Subject By R. W. Rasband This is a terrific novel about the radical abolitionist John Brown. The style of the book is remarkable. Olds writes in short bursts of prose, not more than three or four pages at a time, and from different perspectives: first person, third person, quotes from actual historical documents, and what appears to be an interview with Brown from beyond the grave. The effect is like channel-surfing on cable TV. And it works beautifully--it's an exciting way to write about history for the '90's reader. Olds strips down his language--it reminds me a little of James Ellroy's recent work--but he uses archaic words and sentence structure combined with impressive poetic imagery to achieve a convincing historical density. This book has great resonance. This is a time of intense, moralistic political warfare and this depiction of intense pre-Civil War passions should be disturbingly familiar. Bruce Olds makes us recognize and respect complexity. His final take on John Brown seems to be that he was an unpleasant, possibly insane man who nevertheless knew what the most important moral issue of his time was. Great reading.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Nothing less than terrific By Neil R. Kudler An astonishing retelling of the life of John Brown. I selected this book for my book group after having listened to Banks' "Cloudsplitter" on BOT. I had read a few reviews of that book post hoc only to find that many critics cited this text as superior. I would say that the experience of listening, rather than reading, to Banks' book likely boosts my appraisal as I thought it was brilliant in its expanse, detail and imagination. As for Olds' work, it reads as though one is living through the time in a dream-like state. The wickedness and cruelty that is frequently attributed to "historical context" is brought to bear so that it is difficult to fathom how we look back at our American history as somehow noble and founded on justice. As for the man, John Brown, it was a serendipitous reading choice given the current state of world affairs. When resistance is linked to terrorism, the results are necessarily unpredicatable and frightening, regardless of the outcome.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Crying Shame # 376 By Rude Ingenue I am sorry to see that this excellent novel is out of print. It is both technically innovative and a whirlwind read -- and how many novels are both? Olds's representation of Brown and his world is psychologically and morally complex, historically insightful (yes, even given its postmodern gamesmanship), and more worthy of our nation's most tragic passage than any other six Civil-War-era historical fictions I can think of. Yet this one is indefinitely out of stock while Mr. Banks's clayfooted trudge through the same material is not only in print, but available on audiotape. What a world!
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