Rachel Beanland, THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE

[1:26]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, three hundred and sixty five days a year for about thirty minutes. Minutes. Am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now, and you can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippyclasses.com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at one one one three Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings. But this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. Rachel Beanland is the author of The House is on Fire. Rachel is also the author of Florence Adler swims forever. She is a graduate of the University of South Carolina and earned her MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She lives with her husband and three children in Richmond, Virginia. And Florence Adler Swims Forever is a winner of one of the Jewish Book Award prizes. Welcome, Rachel. Thank you so much for coming back on moms don't have time to read books to discuss The House is on Fire, the novel. Thank you so much for having me. Okay. Thanks for being here. As you know, I love Florence Adler swims forever. We had such good talks about it. It was so successful and like won all these awards and you must have been so excited. And now this is a totally different direction, much further back in the past. Yep. Strict historical fiction with so much research. I can't believe how deep you dove into all of it. All of the resources that you used in recreating people's lives. And I have to say, I was just saying I was in bed reading this, but it was like the anxiety I felt trying to escape this fire. I was like, Oh my gosh. So why don't you tell listeners a little bit about why you chose this fire in 1811, Richmond, Virginia, and what happened to four different people? And like, why did you choose this to write a book about and go into all of that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So

[3:48]Rachel Beanland: the book is based on the eighteen eleven theater fire that happened in Richmond. And, you know, when it happened in Richmond, it wasn't just a big fire in Richmond. It was like a big fire internationally. Seventy two people died, including the governor of Virginia. There were former senators, the president of the Bank of Virginia. Like all of these kind of bigwigs were in the theater that night. But it really also just affected a cross section of people because, you know, of course, remember, at that time we had many fewer states. Virginia was kind of a big deal in the grand scheme of things. And it was just a hugely traumatic event for, of course, everyone there. But but then even people as far away as London were reading everything they could get their hands on about the fire. So it's very, very well documented. But that being said, it's not an event that many people know about. Even if you live in Richmond, I would say more than half the people who live in Richmond don't know that this theater fire happened. And so when I was, you know, I'd finished Florence Sadler's Swims Forever. I remember we had our interview and it was like the beginning of the pandemic, you know, or something. The book came out in July. It was a pandemic book. And I was sitting around thinking about what I was going to write next. And the book that I had been kind of playing with was international. It was going to require all this travel to get right. And I'm looking around and, you know, the flights are grounded and I'm thinking, when am I ever going to get back up in the air, let alone be able to kind of flit off and do the kind of book research I want to do? And so I started thinking about what I could write that was set in my own backyard. And the Richmond Theatre Fire was kind of a natural subject for me because I had learned about it the very first day I moved to Richmond, just by chance a realtor had told me about it. And fascinated. I'd always kind of paid attention to, you know, what I'd hear little bits and pieces about it. And so in regards to your question about kind of the people I chose to follow, I thought long and hard about how I would capture this incredibly scary scenario. And I knew that it had because the fire had affected such a cross section of Virginians, I wanted to document, like, the full range of experiences. So I chose to focus on, you know, one young boy who's behind the scenes working as a stagehand, of course, has has a pivotal role to play in the starting of the fire. I chose to follow a woman who's actually actually the daughter of Patrick Henry, who's up in the box seats. The box seats were the most expensive seats in the house, and they were the hardest to get out of. So, you know, I've got her up on a 3rd Floor box. Her name's Sally. I have an enslaved woman named Cecily who has come to the theater, you know, as an escort with someone but is in the what was called the colored gallery at the time. And the interesting thing about that gallery was that it was a little easier to escape because they had their own entrance. So she becomes someone that we're following. And then there is a lot in the historic record about this man named Gilbert Hunt, who was an enslaved blacksmith in Richmond, Virginia. And he ran towards the fire that night and ended up saving about a dozen white women from the blaze. But, of course, it's 1811. Do they give him his freedom for this? Is there no. Right? He ended up buying his freedom in 1829. But so his story is just endlessly fascinating. So those were the four the four characters that I I chose to focus on, but I I could have chosen any number of of people.

[7:36]Zibby Owens: And he said he had actually moved back to Virginia at the end and had been right. He had gone to Liberia or something and then moved back and like lived the rest of his days free. Yeah. Yeah. He's a really, really interesting,

[7:50]Rachel Beanland: interesting person because, you know, of course, in this time period, I mean, we're in 1811, so we're not near the Civil War yet. And what happened in the 1800s in Virginia and a lot of slaveholding states was that the rights of free and enslaved blacks were kind of slowly stripped away so that by the time you get to the Civil War, they have far fewer rights than they had even, you know, in the early part of that century. And so, you know, Gilbert Hunt is kind of watching those rights be stripped away. For instance, like there was a day when you could be an enslaved black person and be able to be taught to read. And then once people figure out, No, no, no, that's no good, then they take that away from them. You know? So there was a lot happening in that century long before the civil war gets started.

[8:40]Zibby Owens: And you have another storyline which you write about. And I love how you make theories. Right? You have this long author's note at the end of, well, this is based on this family, but maybe it was the husband, the dad, who actually was the one who ordered the chandelier to come down. Right? Because the chandelier basically, what happened, it sounds like, is this chandelier, the pulley wasn't working properly. It was sort of lingering in the middle of the scene. They had to pull it up. They should have put it down, but they didn't wanna disrupt the flow of the show. And so instead, they yanked it higher where it caught fire to the top of the backdrops, which are like these huge crop elements. And the man who insisted on that happening, his daughter ends up passing away. And the wife can never recover at the loss of the daughter because you assert it's possible that in real life, she knew that actually it was her husband

[9:32]Rachel Beanland: who caused the death of her daughter, and she just couldn't live with that. This is the fun part about being a novelist, right? Like, you don't have to follow all the, you know, you don't have to have like historic facts to back up everything you want to say. So what I like to do when I'm writing historical fiction is I like to stay as true as I possibly can to the historical record. Right? So, you know, I look at all of the documents. I was in the archives. I read the inquest report. And it's very clear when you're reading the inquest report that like someone is being kind of protected. Right? And you can almost just read between the lines and figure out, okay, what are they not saying here? And that's probably where the story is. Right? And so for me, the fun is getting to fill in between the lines and say, okay, what's the most logical thing that could have happened here? Right? Who is the person they were likely protecting? And so as I built out the story of the theater fire and what was happening back stage, you know, I could kind of take that inquest report, take the circumstances of who ended up going where after the fire, and then try to rebuild what happened that night. And I can remember I was at a residency with a couple of writers, and we were out on a walk, you know, in Maine on this beautiful little island. And we're talking and I'm saying, Okay, guys, like, how could this have worked? I know the chandelier went up. I know it went down. I know, know, what what happened? What do we think happened? You know? And that that was really fun. I had a big whiteboard in my office. Oh, I a chandelier, and I've, like, got arrows up and down trying to figure out because it just wasn't that well documented in 1811. Wow.

[11:11]Zibby Owens: Well, it is totally fascinating. I recently interviewed James Stewart who wrote Unscripted and Disney War. And he's a, you know, fabulous reporter, journalist type nonfiction writer. And he was literally saying when I talked to him exactly what you just said, but from a reporter standpoint, the story is often in what you don't know, not in what you do know. And that's like what you really have to focus on. And it's exactly what you're saying. Like, what is not in the record,

[11:35]Rachel Beanland: and how can I make a story out of that? Like, where are the leaps, And how can I tease things together? And I find that just incredibly fascinating. Right. And it's partly like in our day and age, it's so historical fiction. I mean, one of the reasons we love it is because we're going back in and inserting people that weren't written about at the time. Right? So we're writing about women. We're writing about people of color. We're writing about the people who didn't get stories written about them. So that's the other fun part is just figuring out, okay, you know, in the case of the fire, the fire killed seventy two people, But like fifty four of them were women. And yet in 1811, there are zero stories written about the women. And so, you know, to go back in between, you know, reading between the lines and say, okay, what was going on with those women? And, you know, how might they have reacted to this?

[12:26]Zibby Owens: So it's almost not a surprise that you wrote this during the pandemic because the emotion, the like escalation of emotion required to insert yourself in this scene in every aspect, right? It's like you've literally put yourself in a burning building. That's what you've done over and over again. You know, with like, how do I get out of here? Like,

[12:53]Zibby Owens: all of our fears sort of play out in in how you delved into this. And like the tension of like, you know, even the sea like, it's like it's now it's getting dark or it's getting smoky and hard to breathe. Or like, now this person can't see. It's like, oh, my gosh. I'm

[13:12]Rachel Beanland: sure that all of my pandemic anxiety went into this book. Yes. You know, and also, you know, it's funny, people have said, you know, one of the things they like about the book is, like, the chapters are really short. And I was writing this book when I had three kids at home for eighteen months, and they never went to school. So, you know, my husband and I would, like, swap places. You know, he would do, like, a little homeschooling, and I would go up to the office. And so it's like, no wonder the chapters are short. Like, I only had, like, these little chunks of time to write in. But, you know, I mean, that's kind of, like, half and jest. But I think there are these real ramifications. And I'm interested, you know, from your perspective, you talk to authors all day, now you're reading all the books that came out of the pandemic. So I'm sure you're seeing lots of themes, you know. I have. Yes. I was also, you know, I was writing this book in the middle of the pandemic, but I was also writing this book in Richmond, Virginia, in the summer and fall of twenty twenty when we also had a lot of amazing, incredible protests. Yes, that's right. You know, the monuments came down that summer. You know, we were able to kind of get this, like, front row seat to that and participate in it. And so I think, you know, especially when I think about Gilbert and Cecily's stories, I was in this wonderful position to be able to kind of see Richmond elevate kind of itself. It was like two hundred years in the making or, you know, three hundred years in the making. It all went into the book. Wow.

[14:42]Zibby Owens: Well, I mean, ultimately, what the book is sort of showing us, which of course we all need reminders of apparently, but we are all the same people trying to like live our lives and make sense of it and get from one place to another and just make it through. Right? And that's at its core, doesn't matter if you're seated at the very top or you're seated underneath. It almost reminded me of Titanic. Mhmm. I'm sure people have compared it to that, but I feel like this is a brilliant insight of my own. But anyway, I'm gonna go with it. You know, there were the people dining and then, you know, black tie, and then there were the people in steerage and what happened when the the water started filling up and where did you wanna be and how did you handle it and, like, all the different viewpoints from the same ship. I feel like it's the same thing. It's just a different catastrophe.

[15:29]Rachel Beanland: Yes. I was very interested in how different members of the community were able to kind of, number one, escape the theater, right, and physically save themselves. But then also pick up the pieces and move forward and process the event, you know, kind of all of the things that came after. And it's interesting. I mean, both my novels, you know, Florence Adler Swims Forever was also an aftermath story, but it was a family, you know, grieving the loss of a daughter. So, you know, looking at kind of how all of these people who were connected to her grieved that loss. And then I move forward to this book, and I'm looking at this whole community and how they're grieving this gigantic loss. So there are a lot of connections that that kind of came out of of writing it. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

[19:09]Zibby Owens: But, also, we get some history too. I mean, I feel like I learned. I didn't know about the fire. I've never even heard of it. I feel like I've only really heard of the triangle shirtwaist fire. People talk about that all the time. Mhmm. Like, why? Why that one? I mean, I know obviously a lot of people perished, and it's awful and awful. But Yeah. We were we were not very good at keeping theaters from burning

[19:28]Rachel Beanland: in prior centuries, you know. And when I started reading about all the paratechnics and, you know, I mean, it's no surprise that theaters burned down. I mean, you've got 14 year old stagehands back there running the show, and they're dealing with live flames.

[19:43]Zibby Owens: You know, of course, anything can go wrong and and anything did. And, of course, it's not like they're just using the chandeliers for effect. Like, is literally how they were seeing. Right. That's that's the lighting. Yeah. That's Yeah. Like, otherwise, it would be dark. Like, there were no lights.

[19:58]Rachel Beanland: Right. Right. Yeah. No, I remember reading something, you know, in the research that was like about the sound that the chandeliers made because, you know, if you're in the audience and it's quiet, you could hear the wax dripping onto the floor. And I just thought that was such an interesting image. Like, you know, I hadn't thought of the audio of that. Totally. It's a different world going to the theater. Think they could have put some sort of a tray. Something. You know? Like,

[20:27]Zibby Owens: you know, even candle even those tall candles now, like tapered candles, and they have those little Right. Glass round things on the bus. Chirping everywhere. Yeah. Oh my gosh. People would have to wear hats. You know? Be like anyway, what are some of the main, you know, some of the main messages to you when you've after going through the intensity of of reenacting this scene and figuring it out from, like, your very logical side of your brain and, you know, all the intersecting timelines and all of that. And then you like, what did you take away from this whole thing?

[20:59]Rachel Beanland: I mean, you know, there are some pretty big messages about equality and wanting to give everyone a fair shake and and the ability to, you know, not just save themselves from a burning building, but have a good life. Right? So there's a lot there, you know, particularly as as you look at the intersecting storylines. And we're looking, you know, not just at the lives of enslaved people in Richmond, but also women and a lot of people who just weren't able to tell their stories and weren't able to advocate for themselves in the same way. Right? So I think I was really interested in pursuing that path, that avenue as I was writing, you know, thinking about what is it like if you can't tell your story and if you notice in the world around you that things aren't fair, but there's nothing you can do about it. I think I spent a lot of time thinking about that as I was writing. And, you know, I think that one of the things I thought a lot about was, yeah, we've made a lot of progress, of course, you know, in the course of two hundred and something years. But there are also some institutions and practices that are in play today that you can trace back directly to what was happening even two hundred years ago. And, you know, when we look at something like policing, you know, now as opposed to what was happening to, you know, Gilbert and some of his contemporaries in the book. And there are direct lines you can draw. So yeah, those are some of the big thoughts I was having along with just trying to keep my plot from tangling itself. Right?

[22:33]Zibby Owens: It's hard to have a plot tank in like the most dramatic thing ever. You are inherently on edge and engaged and empathetic. Thank you. I mean, I guess you could have made it bad, but you didn't.

[22:49]Rachel Beanland: Keeping it all safe was, I guess, the challenge.

[22:53]Zibby Owens: And I love how one of the parting thoughts that you leave the reader with is, yes, this is a horrible event. But for some people, like there are a couple undocumented, you know, question marks about some of the people who escaped and that maybe this horrible thing actually was the best thing for some former slaves to escape and find a new life. And where are those families

[23:15]Rachel Beanland: descended from that person? What happened to that person? So you just Yeah, that was really that was an interesting storyline. And the one that I had to do the imagining was, you know, we had this is Cecily's storyline. We had some information about a woman who had potentially they believe historians believe she might have escaped the fire. There's some documentation that, you know, at the time when they were keeping records of the list of the dead, there are a few enslaved people where there are kind of notes beside their name. They're not just like, Oh, these people are dead. It's like supposed to have perished. You know, little notes. Believe to have. Yeah. For me to have, you know, and it it it brings up the fact that, you know, somebody at that time thought that maybe that's not what had happened. And so, you know, Cecily's storyline kind of allowed me to experiment with this idea of, you know, what if for someone that fire was the best day of their life, you know, because it gave them an opportunity to disappear.

[24:17]Zibby Owens: Wow. Heavy stuff. So what after you finished writing this and handed in, sold it, blah, blah, blah, what happened after that? Like, what did you start working on? Is that actually a book? Like, what happened next in your life?

[24:33]Rachel Beanland: Well, so this one, sold on contract. So I probably had 75 pages when I sold it. And so I kept writing, you know, for a long time. And of course, like, panicked that I was never going to finish it because my children again were like never going to leave my house. But eventually, you know, it did. I did conclude the writing of this novel, thank God. But now, yeah, I'm in the early stages of a third novel. And, you know, I'm excited about it, but it's like a little baby. You know, it's like when you when you're pregnant and you, like, don't want to tell anyone the name of the baby because you don't want them to judge the name that you're going to select. It's it's like that. I, you know, I hope it goes well.

[25:14]Zibby Owens: I did not tell my family my third kid's name until she was born.

[25:20]Rachel Beanland: And my entire extended family, both sides, staged, like, an intervention about the name and how it was such a bad Right. Well, as my third child is named Florence, which is, of course, a family name. Florence Adler swims forever. Yeah. I got I got a little pushback on Florence. And so I I totally support people who wanna hide their baby names until the I ended up changing the name. I didn't. You didn't stick to your guns. I didn't. No. I

[25:49]Zibby Owens: yeah. For a couple hours there, she didn't even have a name. And then I changed it. And then we got home and like because I had told a couple of people we had like, you know, a chair. You had some baby blankets and stuff that were really Yeah. The one person I was like, this is what the name is gonna be. And we had to throw those out. Anyway, they were probably right, but I was very offended. I was literally like on the stretcher. I don't even know why I'm telling the story. But like literally, you know, in like the freezing and, you know, when you're like, wait. Anyway. Well, that's I mean, it's this it's a perfect metaphor because

[26:17]Rachel Beanland: I will undoubtedly tell you about this novel and then it will totally change and then I will have to undo it. Yeah. So don't tell me. It's fine. I don't even want to know. Are you reading anything good? Yes. Always. Right now, I'm finishing the marriage portrait, which I am totally a huge fan of Maggie O'Farrell. So that's been really lovely to read. And then I also am, like, halfway through. I always have a couple of things going into time. I'm halfway through Hannah Pullvinen's The End of Drum Time and I'm immensely enjoying that as well. So I heard that was amazing.

[26:50]Zibby Owens: And how is life with the kids back in school? Everything feel good again? My god. It's so glorious.

[26:57]Rachel Beanland: So so glorious. Don't you feel like you were, like, training at altitude and now you can, like, you know, coast? Yeah. Well, I mean, the funny thing is that I, you know, I sold my first novel in 2019 and it was going to come out in '20. And so I, you know, I quit my job. I finished an MFA program. I was like really preparing to be like a full time novelist. It was like, This is the dream. I have finally realized the dream. Like, this is what I'm going to do. And then, of course, like March 2020, the kids come home and they, like, never leave. So it really wasn't until, you know, the following year that I got them all out of the house and was able to kind of tenderly, like gingerly put my foot in the water of like, oh, is this what it's like to work from home and write a novel and like do all the things? You know? So I'm now at that point where I'm like, okay, this is pretty good.

[27:52]Zibby Owens: You know, it's interesting. Put something about your kids like, you know, thanks for dealing with it when I went up to my office all the time. Or I don't know. Sorry for all the time I was in the office or something. And I feel like I've put something in there too. Like, so sorry about this. And then I'm thinking, like, now I actually wanna, like, go through and do, like, an an acknowledgment study, like, if I had more time, which I don't. But analyzing like what men put in acknowledgments versus women. Because like no man is gonna be like, sorry, kids, but I had to go to my office last year. To be a famous author. You know? They would never say that.

[28:23]Rachel Beanland: I know. You know what? I did think of it as I was writing it. I was like, oh, is this like weird that I'm apologizing for this? No, it's not. But then I also do feel like, oh my god, I feel bad too. Feel bad. I can't really hang out with you that much. I had a really bad I had the month before the book was due. It was like December. You know, it was the holidays. You should have been hanging out with your family constantly. And it was the combination of it was also when all the when COVID was at its peak with, like, the airlines, you know, and, like, all the flights got canceled. So it's like my husband and kids took off for Florida, and I was gonna fly down for three days. And they were going for ten or something. But it was like, I can only give three because I'm under deadline. Right? And then my flight got canceled and I'm like, Okay, I'm not rescheduling. I'm just not coming because, like, I had too much to write. And it ended up being a complete godsend because I really was like up. Was like writing as they were pulling the Word document with me. But yeah, that December, I just like sat in my pajamas on the couch while my kids were in Florida having the time of their lives. And, you know, they didn't see me. So

[29:31]Zibby Owens: the things we do for literature. And yet they were okay. They were okay. They were okay. So it's good to remember. Yeah. All this, you know, all this guilt. It was ten days and look what you did. Right. And I like to think I'm modeling like

[29:45]Rachel Beanland: something good for them. I don't know. Totally. Yeah. You had a business trip. It's fine. Right. It was like a business trip, but I stayed home and they left. Yeah. Stay business staycation.

[29:55]Zibby Owens: Right. Right. Totally see why you wrote it. Cultural norms, blah blah blah. And all all of the the pulls with the kids. But anyway, the house is on fire, the title I do know. The house is on fire. So exciting. Really well done. You're so smart, Rachel. You're just like the way you write, you're just so smart. Like, I'd love it. You could be a history professor if you wanted. No.

[30:19]Rachel Beanland: You know why I can't? Because I don't like citations. I really like, I don't wanna have to do footnotes and stuff. Okay. Alright. Fine. You'd need like a good assistant or something. But as soon as you tell me I have to do it in MLA or whatever, I lose all interest.

[30:35]Zibby Owens: It's almost like I'm sorry. I keep saying like my last sentence. But there's this whole series for kids called, you know, I survived blah, blah, blah. Like, I feel like this is I survived for grownups. Yeah. That's a great that's a great I may, like, have my publicist blurb, you know, like grab that as a blurb. Go ahead. Go ahead. You should have that author do a quote. Yeah. You could share the brand, brand extension. Okay. Goodbye. Have a great day.

[31:05]Rachel Beanland: Thank you.

[31:06]Zibby Owens: And I can't wait to hear what you survive next. Okay. Bye.