A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

The Roaring Twenties–the Jazz Age–has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it used to be also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain used to be not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of The usa used to be a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson used to be a magnetic presence whose life story changed with each telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d turn out to be the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it used to be a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony in any case brought the Klan to their knees.

A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the most darkest threads in American history.