Raising Holy Hell: A Novel [Paperback]

Bruce Olds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Picador (August 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312420935
• ISBN-13: 978-0312420932
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #970,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Original Treatment of a Familiar Subject, May 7, 2001

By 

R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Raising Holy Hell (Paperback)

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:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing less than terrific, November 27, 2001

By 

Neil R. Kudler "nrk99" (Northampton, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Raising Holy Hell (Paperback)

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:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crying Shame # 376, May 22, 2001

By 

P. Scott Stanfield (Lincoln, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Raising Holy Hell (Paperback)

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!