Lee and Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival

United Jewish Federation of Tidewater & Simon Family JCC's Lee & Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival 2024

For over 40 years, this annual celebration of Jewish writers, books, and ideas has featured authors from various backgrounds who have written about diverse topics. Featured author events allow the community to engage with bestselling and up-and-coming writers.

Schedule of Events

7:30PM - 9:00PM: Rachel Beanland : Jewish Book Festival

Free & Open to the Community

Based on the true story of Richmond’s 1811 theater fire, this story of four characters from drastically different backgrounds reveals how tragedy can offer rare chances for redemption.

It’s the height of the winter social season in Richmond, Virginia. On the night after Christmas in 1811, the city’s only theater is packed with more than six hundred revelers. In the third-floor boxes sits newly widowed Sally Henry Campbell, reliving the happy times she shared with her husband. One floor away, in the colored gallery, Cecily Patterson is grateful for a brief escape from her worsening life. Backstage, young stagehand Jack Gibson hopes for a permanent job with the company, while blacksmith Gilbert Hunt, across town, dreams of one day bringing his wife to the theater once he can buy her freedom.

When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions that will affect not only their own lives but those of countless others. In the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined. Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, "The House Is on Fire" proves that sometimes, amid great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption.

Rachel Beanland is the author of the novel "Florence Adler Swims Forever." She is a graduate of the University of South Carolina and earned her MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She lives with her husband and three children in Richmond, Virginia. She has taught creative writing at the College of William & Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University and served as the 2023–2024 Writer in Residence at the University of Richmond.