Raising Holy Hell: A Novel [Hardcover]

Bruce Olds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1995

A fictional account of the life of John Brown portrays his experiences as the son of Ohio abolitionists, the doting father of twenty children, and a chronic failure as a businessman. A first novel. 50,000 first printing. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Through a montage of real and fabricated quotations from historical documents, witnesses and participants, and through the words of an omniscient and oddly ironic narrator, first-novelist Olds offers a fascinating study of slavery in the U.S. and of one of its most ardent opponents, the enigmatic John Brown, whose violent abolitionist crusades foreshadowed-and, arguably, precipitated-the Civil War. This protean narrative, part biography, part essay, traces Brown's life from his childhood in the Ohio of the early 1800s through his execution in Virginia at age 59, while simultaneously encapsulating various American attitudes-both personal and institutional-toward slavery and its victims. National heroes-including Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington-are skewered, sometimes with their own euphemistic bigotry, for their complicity in Southern slavery. Antislavery forces in the territories are portrayed as racists who merely want black people, free or enslaved, kept far away from their new homes. Historic figures like Robert E. Lee, Harriet Tubman, Horace Greeley and Frederick Douglass offer their impressions of Brown and his mission. Olds's mixture of novelistic and quasi-documentarian narrative produces a remarkably complex portrait of the paradoxical zealot. The inevitability of the strangely anticlimactic conflict at Harper's Ferry, Va., creates tension throughout, while the narrator's succinct, sometimes mordant commentary highlights elements of American history not fully acknowledged even today. 50,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1995 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, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 333 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1st edition (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805038566
• ISBN-13: 978-0805038569
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,853,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

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!