A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them (2023, Timothy Egan)

Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland illuminates the tawdry life and times of D.C. Stephenson, the leader of Indiana's Ku Klux Klan chapter in the 1920s. Egan provides a cliff notes sketch of the Klan's original iteration during Reconstruction, and its resurgence in the post-WWI United States, before moving onto his main story: how the Klan took over an entire state for much of the '20s. Stephenson, an unusually gifted conman, sold millions of Indianans on the idea that cloaked vigilantes were needed to rescue the United States from decadence, immigration and cultural rot. Thus the Second Klan openly paraded around the Hoosier State, denouncing subversive politics, African-Americans, Catholic and Jewish immigrants and the related scourges of alcohol, feminism and sexual liberation, initiating vigilante attacks on anyone deemed subversive towards Stephenson's order while winning loyalty of political figures throughout the State, and eventually the country. Not that Stephenson himself adhered to his principles: behind the scenes he was a cheat, a bigamist, an alcoholic who brutalized his romantic paramours. Stephenson's downfall came about not through his repulsive politics, which were common enough for his time, but through his rape, abduction and murder of Madge Oberhalzer, a headstrong modern woman who spurned Stephenson's advances and was brutalized in turn. Egan perhaps glories too much in the seamier side of his story, but astutely observes that Stephenson's support grew not in spite but because of his hypocrisy; too strong or shameless to be held to his own principles, he exercised a degree of naked power ("I am the law" was his Judge Dredd-esque boast) which, for many, foretold the strong man. Fortunately, rape and murder was too gruesome for 1920s Americans to countenance; Stephenson received a long prison sentence and while the national Klan disowned him, coverage of the trial was enough to destroy their power. Not a definitive account of its subject, but a good narrative reminding us (as if modern Americans need reminding) that the seeds of hate and appeal of strongman rule are perennial in our politics.

Rating: 4/5