Resident Book Review of “A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot To Take Over America, And The Woman Who Stopped Them”

Charlestown resident Ken Weeden will review A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot To Take Over America, And The Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan [New York: Viking, 2023] on Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 7 PM in the Auditorium.

In a “can’t put down,” spellbinding narrative, Timothy Egan describes how the Ku Klux Klan succeeded in largely taking control of Indiana in the 1920s.  The Klan saw many white people becoming restless over the numbers of Jews, Catholics, Blacks, and foreigners who were “invading” their state.  They felt these were inferior, insane and diseased people, who were destroying Christian America.

In D.C Stephenson, the Klan found its man to stoke those fears.  Largely an uneducated drifter, a failure in business and marriage, he was always just one step ahead of the law.  But in the KKK, he found purpose and success.  Within three years Indiana Klan membership was the largest in the country. Beyond ordinary people, he recruited ministers,

judges, police officials, mayors, state legislators, the governor, and most of the state’s congressmen.  As Egan says, “the Klan owned Indiana and he owned the Klan.”

Yet there was an even more evil side of Stephenson.  He was an alcoholic, sadistic sexual predator.  He brutally abused women at will.  None dared report him, because he owned the police.

Then he met Madge Oberholtzer, a modern woman of the 1920s who had dreams and ambitions. She refused his advances but the more she resisted, the more sadistically he abused her.  Since she knew it was useless to call the police, she chose suicide.  During the two to three weeks she slowly died, she dictated a detailed death bed confession that brought him down along with the Klan in the Midwest.

In the end, the reader is left stunned by the corruption and the pure hate Egan so carefully details and terrified by how close he came to succeeding.

Timothy Egan is an author-journalist who has written eight nonfiction works.  His book The Dust Bowl won a National Book Award in 2006.

Resident Ken Weeden, a retired history teacher, educator and trainer, teaches ELLIC classes related to social justice and has presented annual book reviews.