Fire & Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834

by Nancy Lusignan Schultz

Book Overview

Winner of the New England American Studies Association's Lois Rudnick Book Prize (2002)

In the midst of a deadly heat wave during the summer of 1834, a woman clawed her way over the wall of an Ursuline convent on Mount Benedict in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and escaped to the home of a neighbor, pleading for protection. When the bishop, Benedict Fenwick, persuaded her to return, vicious gossip began swirling through the Yankee community...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555535143
• ISBN13: 9781555535148
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Northeastern University Press
• Length: 317 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.5"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

BRAVO DR. SCHULTZ!

A WELL CRAFTED HISTORICAL READ! I WAS ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH THE EVENTS SURROUNDING THE TRAGEDY AT THE URSULINE CONVENT BUT WAS STRUCK MOST BY SCHULTZ'S POWER OF TRANSPORTING THE READER BACK TO THAT TIME, THAT CONVENT, TO THE UNSPEAKABLE ATROICITY INFLICTED BY THE HANDS OF THE ARSONISTS. SCHULTZ'S DECISION TO BRING THIS HISTORICALLY RELEVANT STORY TO THE MASSES IS BOTH BRILLIANT & INSPIRING!

Fire and Roses by Nancy Lusignan Schultz

I found this book -- to use a word that has become hackneyed -- awesome. The research is incredible in its depth, and the writing is elegant. In the best tradition of my favorite historian, Barbara Tuchman, Nancy Lusignan Schultz never loses sight of the story -- and a compelling one it is. The burning of the Ursuline convent was an act of almost unbelievable savagery -- and it is hard to think that ultimately every one of the arsonists got away with the crime -- the ringleader living his life out in New Hampshire as a pillar of the community.

A fascinating read!

I found Fire and Roses and fully engaging read. As a native Bostonian, I was completely swept up in the historical events that took place in the mid-eighteen hundreds in my very own backyard! Fire and Roses, a captivating account of the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, MA, is must read. I give my utmost praise to Nancy Schultz, who not only proves to be a historical mastermind of the 19th century but also a brilliant storyteller.

Working class rioters vs a feisty Urseline Mother Superior

I was amazed and astonished to read this account of the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown , Ma. The book is an academic and provacative account of an aspect of our history I knew nothing about. I enjoy historical novels and was totally taken in by this book. Thank you Professor Schultz for giving me this additional insight into our history! A great read!

A fascinating episode from history with resonance for today

This book tells a truly engrossing story of the events that led up to the burning of the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, just outside of Boston, by an angry mob. Professor Schultz insightfully examines the many different issues of religious intolerance, ethnic predjudice, and economic class struggles that culminated in a night of violence. She has developed a cast of wonderfully complex and interesting characters. The portraits she has painted of Mary Anne Moffett, Bishop Fenwick, Rebecca Reed, and John Buzzell are vivid and compelling.Having been raised Catholic, and having attended Catholic schools (with the Sisters of Notre Dame in grammar school, and the Xavarian Brothers in high school), I was amazed by the ignorance about Catholic religious life on the part of the Protestants. I was also shocked that, so soon after the American Revolution, an act of religious intolerance so dramatic as the burning of the convent could have occurred right here in Boston (the refuge of Puritan victims of religious intolerance).But, at the same time, this is not simply a shameful episode in history...as the author notes, it has resonance in our own time. Reading this book made me stop and think about my attitudes toward people whom I do not fully understand through my own ignorance. My initial disbelief that nineteenth-century Protestants would ascribe such bizzare activities to Catholics does not seem so strange when I think of my own ignorant reaction to the Mormons' restrictions on caffine and alchohol, and the Christian Scientists' reluctance to seek medical attention. As an outsider, these practices seem odd to me, and I am unable to place them in the whole context of the sect's belief system. Combine that kind of ignorance with the ethnic and class issues brewing in nineteenth century Boston, and it begins to make sense that an event like the convent burning could have happened...and sadly continues to happen today.