Content levels
Trigger warnings
Positive tags
Hero archetypes
Heroine archetypes
Protagonist archetypes
Tropes
Themes
Synopsis
Based on true events, Magic City is the powerful story of two people who unwittingly lit the match that burned the community of Greenwood to the ground and erased it from the history books. Jewell Parker Rhodes imagines this tragedy through the eyes of Joe Samuels and Mary Keane, two people fundamentally divided by race but forever joined by fate. When Joe, a young man entranced by Houdini, is falsely accused of rape, he must perform his greatest escape by eluding a bloodthirsty lynch mob. Haunted by the mystery of his brother's death and the dark truth behind his father's success, Joe soon learns that he has been running all his life and that this may actually be the moment to turn and fight. Mary, the motherless daughter of a poor farmer who tries to marry her off to the farmhand who viciously raped her, is barely able to imagine what life could be like outside the prison of her own home. Now, however, she must unlock the courage to help exonerate the man she has accused with her panicked cry. Magic City, a mythic tale of violent revenge, is a portrait of an era, climaxing in the heroic but doomed stand that ultimately pitted the National Guard against a small band of black men determined to defend the town they had built into the "Negro Wall Street." Depicted against a backdrop of jail escapes, ghosts, family betrayal, and lost loves, it is a tale at once harrowing and redemptive.
Magic City: content & age rating
Intended for adult readers (18+).
Based on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, this novel contains graphic racial violence including lynching and mass murder, rape (on-page assault of a minor), and intense historical trauma. The violent climax depicts armed conflict between a community and the National Guard.
What to know going in
This book has strong violence, moderate sexual content, and moderate language. Content notes include sexual assault, genocide, domestic violence, graphic violence, and murder (see the full list above).
Who'll love this
Adult readers interested in magical realism and the untold stories of American racial violence will find this a powerful, haunting exploration of the Tulsa massacre.