In A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Timothy Egan presents a range of historical events that include a legal matter --- the murder of a suicidal victim of sadistic cruelty --- that is still studied for its far-reaching implications.

America’s raucous Roaring Twenties forms the backdrop for this portrait of tyranny and terror writ large. With the South and other regions reeling from the lost Civil War, and the banning of alcohol consumption as a nationwide restriction, a power-mad player conceived a wicked plan.

"A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND combines Egan’s diligent research with his ability to create credible, emotionally gripping scenes. It should be studied by groups and individuals sincerely wishing to understand America’s past..."

D.C. Stephenson was a shady, scrabbling entrepreneur who dropped his scheme to run for political office when he found a hotbed of perfect suckers --- members of the newly burgeoning Ku Klux Klan. He arranged that new Klan members would pay a fee, and he would take a percentage of each. Consequently, he became wealthy within months of “preaching” the Klan’s twisted ideals in white Protestant churches. He promoted the hatred of Blacks, Jews and Catholics, always stressing that such bias was true to America’s founding principles. The Klan’s membership swelled to hundreds of thousands with Stephenson at the helm. But a chance meeting in 1925 with a rather reserved young woman would prove to be his ultimate undoing.

Madge Oberholtzer was a former teacher who volunteered to help at the banquet where she and Stephenson were fated to connect. After a few meetups, Stephenson would show his darkest side to Madge, which his former wives and other women knew all too well. He plied her with alcohol until she could not resist his rape and grotesque physical tortures. Her final conscious act would seal his fate, obliterating his power grab and soon reducing Klan numbers to a discredited few. 

Egan, who has won numerous awards for his earlier works (A PILGRIMAGE TO ETERNITY, THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN, THE WORST HARD TIME), builds the saga of Stephenson’s rise and fall with a large cast of direct and peripheral characters involved in the hate-based racist attitudes and destructive actions that affected so many in the wake of southern Reconstruction. Readers will doubtless feel discomfiture as they are immersed in the factual reminders of America’s struggle to free itself from racial and religious bias --- a struggle that, lamentably, still has a place in our headlines.

A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND combines Egan’s diligent research with his ability to create credible, emotionally gripping scenes. It should be studied by groups and individuals sincerely wishing to understand America’s past, with an eye to refashioning and improving its present and future.